TexPad Macros
Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 8:23 am
Hello All!
I would like to offer a suggestion regarding "editable macros".
Sometime in the late 1980s, WordPerfect (WP) introduced a macro language, which I believe they called PerfectScript. It was used until WP 5.1+ was replaced with Ver 6, a language that was incomprehensible to me.
PerfectScript was closely based on the BASIC programming language, and, most importantly, usable by someone like me with no other programming skills, and even then my BASIC was limited to a few dozen lines of code.
Using nothing other than the WP manual (1000+ pages), I learned to write scripts that ran to many hundreds of lines. With WP, I was able to manage a complex organization that had over 82,000 subscribers, a daily 30-page newsletter, a principal website with over 25,000 cross-indexed articles, and all manner of odds and ends.
The thing that made PerfectScript so easy to manage was a compiler/decompiler that allowed me to fully create/edit the scripts in TextPad (I still have the WP clip library).
Eventually, it got harder to run WP (a DOS program) in Windows, and I slowly switched to TextPad, which I had been using occasionally for some years.
Therefore, I hope that serious consideration will be given to creating a TextPad scripting language built on BASIC, and incorporating the one thing that PerfectScript lacked, and that is Regular Expressions.
Best regards,
Phil Reynolds - Consultant
bygbyte@gmail.com
I would like to offer a suggestion regarding "editable macros".
Sometime in the late 1980s, WordPerfect (WP) introduced a macro language, which I believe they called PerfectScript. It was used until WP 5.1+ was replaced with Ver 6, a language that was incomprehensible to me.
PerfectScript was closely based on the BASIC programming language, and, most importantly, usable by someone like me with no other programming skills, and even then my BASIC was limited to a few dozen lines of code.
Using nothing other than the WP manual (1000+ pages), I learned to write scripts that ran to many hundreds of lines. With WP, I was able to manage a complex organization that had over 82,000 subscribers, a daily 30-page newsletter, a principal website with over 25,000 cross-indexed articles, and all manner of odds and ends.
The thing that made PerfectScript so easy to manage was a compiler/decompiler that allowed me to fully create/edit the scripts in TextPad (I still have the WP clip library).
Eventually, it got harder to run WP (a DOS program) in Windows, and I slowly switched to TextPad, which I had been using occasionally for some years.
Therefore, I hope that serious consideration will be given to creating a TextPad scripting language built on BASIC, and incorporating the one thing that PerfectScript lacked, and that is Regular Expressions.
Best regards,
Phil Reynolds - Consultant
bygbyte@gmail.com