Editable Macros

[gracefool]

What do you mean, *still*? It's pretty hard for other suggestions to catch up.

[Bob Hansen]

It's pretty hard for other suggestions to catch up.

All polls have equal opportunity. I think that Tabbed indents and Editable Macros do seem to stay at the top very consistently though.

[webber123456]

please add ability to edit macros . I think this woud be the most important enhancement for all users.

I recommend using wsh since it supports many languages.

I know wsh is available for developing custom tools, it would be nice to use it also for macros if that is possible.

thanks for a great product, I use it every day.

[Tomas Eklund]

I can see that editable/scriptable macros has been on the wishlist for quite some time now.

Personally I could settle for editable macros as a start (in version 5), and then hope/wait for scriptable macros (in version 6). This feature request has very, very high priority for me. I'm more than willing to pay a whole new registration (upgrade) fee just to get it added to TextPad.

I don't care what language would be used. I really don't. I'm willing to learn it. Just add the feature, please...

[cleg]

Editable macros could be a major enhancement.
I've wished for it MANY TIMES.

Hope we get it!

[TRAFFICBLOWS]

USE PERL!!!!

[ramonsky]

No.

Hmmm. All uppercase message; four exclamation marks, no less! Is there something you're trying to tell us?

[BenjiSmith]

USE PERL!!!!

I agree, when you just want to munge up a text file, it probably makes sense to use a scripting language like Perl.

But I'm really hoping that the Editable Macros in TextPad will allow us to capture and manipulate application objects (like cursor position, selection range, clipboard content, an array of open files, an array of lines in the current open file, etc), making it possible not just to munge text files, but to implement novel IDE features (like function lists, etc) ourselves.

But that's just me.

[GMorris]

For me, I would be happy with ANY improvement to macros with TextPad. Even the current macro implementation (which is very good, I might add) would benefit from some means of looping, even if it were only ONE kind of loop. And of course, an editor of some sort. My idea would be to first implement the loop, then implement a textual way to edit from within TextPad just to make some of us happier. Later, bigger and better features and maybe an API could be added. Like a lot of people, I couldn't care less what language, and I'd settle for anything as long as we can edit the macros and have some way to loop.

[BenjiSmith]

In a recent thread (here), somebody asked for auto-closing XML tags, and, from my perspective, it was the perfect opportunity to showcase a potential use of an editable macro language. Here's some example pseudocode that I'd love to be able to implement in the forthcoming (ahem) TextPad macro implementation:

Code: Select all

on event(KEY_PRESS) {
	if (currentFile.fileExtension == 'XML') {
		if (lastKeysPressed(2) == '</') {
			String xmlTag = searchBackwardForOpenTag();
			autocomplete.addChoice(xmlTag);
		}
	}
}

String searchBackwardForOpenTag() {
	// BLAH BLAH BLAH
}

In my opinion, the MOST IMPORTANT aspect of any Macro language that we get is that we have access to application objects and events.

[muthm]

One of the lessons learned from Unix is "the right tool for the right job" (very closely related to "keep it simple, stupid"!).

TextPad has an excellent support for one-keystroke external program calls.
I use Ctrl-1 to run the file I am editing in a shell (using Cygwin), with no single keystroke before that, not even Ctrl-S to save the file or Alt-Tab to switch to another application!
I use Ctrl-2 to run the program I am editing through the Perl Interpreter (Active Perl).
I use Ctrl-3 to run my application consisting of several files, no matter which file I am currently editing.

I recently had to work on a program file that needed to run through a formatting script before I could run the program itself. The formattting script had to copy certain parts of the code multiple times and change some values in each part. I wrote the formatting script in Perl, and I attached it to one of the Ctrl-N external calls. Calling the formatter script was a single keystroke matter, Textpad would save the file, run the formatter and ask me if I wanted to reload the changed file.
You can use every programming language to implement this kind of "filtering macros", and everything is already there.

It is not the same as calling a macro within the editor, mainly because the external script has no idea where my cursor was, and because it always has to work on the whole file. But I found this extremely useful.

I can even think of recording a keystroke macro that writes my currently selected text into a temporary file, runs an external script over it (written in any programming language) and reinserts the result at the same position. Everything is there! Textpad is great, as it lets you combine the tools that do their job best!

So even though I think it would be very helpful to be able to edit the keystroke macros, integrating a programming language seems overdosed to me.
Even as a programmer I never made it to learn a whole new programming language (Lisp) that I could use nowhere else just for programming Emacs macros.

Greetings!
Matthias

[BruceMarriott]

I've used TextPad for many years and think it rather good.... however I've recently come to the view that I'm being seriously hampered in moving forward because of the difficulty in developing and modifying Macros. Editing is needed - I can't keep recreating macros from scratch to add a badly needed new tweak.

Despite all the polls etc, Helios don't seem to want to move on this - sad but its clearly their call. The issue is what do I and others do about it other then wringing of hands. I've been looking at other ways forward and would be interested in others thoughts. Heres how it seems to me...

There is an initiative to reverse engineer TextPad macros and try and give us what we might want without Hellos involvement. Its early days but something might come of it in future.

Two separate Macro applications have been mentioned here - Autoit v3 and Macro Scheduler. I've had a brief look and can't really see how I can easily apply them within TextPad - indeed in several places on this forum Macro Scheduler proponents talk of the joy of having it run up TextPad, run some TextPad macros (the actual problem!) and save it all out. It might be nice but I want to do a few simple things in TextPad, not automate the universe! Instructions also seem a problem - the joy of TextPad is that the instructions for what macro functionality there is are rather good (for my level anyway). Anyway the people wed to Autoit v3 and Macro Scheduler seem to have bigger fish to fry and without an awful lot of advice and practical help I can't see so many ordinary punters going that way.

So what of other editors out there? I've done a look around and the situation is not so brilliant really... its not been a long evaluation and I might well have missed some things, but in general I've looked to see if I can easily do the same things in others that I do in TextPad, but where the editor purportedly has better Macro capabilities.

Boxer struggles with something as basic as word wrap - doubtless there are workarounds but I can't devote the time to un fathom what most other editors to easily

Ultra Edit - much used and recommended its problem seems to be poor documentation. People on their Forum will help with Macro issues but its all screaming out for a decent manual. One to investigate further however.

GWD - Can't find a way to reformat text - ie add two or more lines together - I use that a lot. Doubtless I could use a macro for it but that seems hard work on day one.

jEdit - ditto

EMEditor - can do limited reformatting but really need a macro to do properly ie same problem as above. Appears version one and not feature rich wrt to configuration

NoteTab - Seems to have a good manual but not sure yet how well it covers scripting - its the first one I'm looking at further however.

Overall moving editor is not easy and I guess in my heart of hearts what I'd love to see is Hellos post up a message saying TextPad 5 is on the way and better macro support is in. "We've listened and we're responding' would be the message....

[Tomas Eklund]

Overall moving editor is not easy and I guess in my heart of hearts what I'd love to see is Hellos post up a message saying TextPad 5 is on the way and better macro support is in. "We've listened and we're responding' would be the message....

Amen!

[BruceMarriott]

Just to say having investigated NotTab Pro I've moved over to it. It's so easy to do marco's and all those little scripts I wanted to massage this or inject that are easily done. There are some inevitable downsides and some other parts of it are not so polished as TextPad. But it represents a useful step forward in what I need and that's what counts.

I've not come back to crow particularly more to pass on a positive experience really. I dreaded looking for and then changing editor, but the reality, on this occasion, has proved worthwhile. I'll always have a soft-spot for TextPad, may even return I suppose, but I can't help but feel that the lack of any communication (let alone action) on this issue is seriously handicapping its future.

[Ryck]

Hi

I noticed that the first request for editable macros was in 4/26/2003. It's two years almost. Will this thing happen?

I also want the macros be human readable. I cast my vote that the macro language be Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications, or similar, as I'm very fluent in VB. But some kind of program language to run or automate TextPad intelligently is better than nothing.

I also favor the idea that it have the option to be interactive. In other words, the ability to inquire of the user for parameters in order to run. I can program some templates and give them to my users so they can take care of editing jobs themselves without having to know the code.

Please work on these and the other fine suggestions brought up by the other users.