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Macros...again.
Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2003 3:51 pm
by Badger
Webmasta (or anyone else who will help):
Upon attempting your suggestion, something's just not right.
All the macros that I would like to packet together have a default play mode to repeat to the end of the file. If I individually run each macro, all is well, but after I start recording and select a macro to run, a Textpad warning is issued either being "Cannot find regular expression..." or "Cannot find literal string..." I'm pretty new at macroing, so please excuse my lack of knowledge of what's going on. The help is really appreciated though.
Badger
Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2003 5:25 pm
by Mr. Strange
I'm having just this problem. This is a feature, as I understand it. I wrote my own (as yet unanswered) topic on this subject.
The help file says that a macro will exit when a find command fails. It doesn't really, because that's how repeat until end of file works in many cases - you fail a search, then repeat again from the beginning. (Hopefully down a bit from the last inital search.)
However, while recording a macro, this rule is strictly enforced. So the macro you are recording does only one loop (if even a full loop) and then exits.
I don't know whether or not this will be changed in the future. I suspect that at one time the rule was always enforced, but users requested a change, which then was made only in single-macros rather than mega-macros (which contain macros.)
--Mr. Strange
Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2003 2:43 pm
by webmasta
All the macros that I would like to packet together have a default play mode to repeat to the end of the file.
Try recording the individual macros again, this time check "wrap searches" in the find dialog and "play once" in the macro save dialog.
Then record the master macro.
In this mode, the macros will run and fail quietly if the find returns false. Just remember that once the macros are running its on auto pilot... if you need to make decisions based on what any individual macro returns, then you have to think all possibilities and perm the macros accordingly.
Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2003 3:04 pm
by webmasta
Which brings me to another point in macro recording.... anyone who is familiar with adobe photoshop actions palette (which is macro to its highest) will appreciate the way that is setup.
Upon recording an action or series of actions, each step you record is placed on line in a dialog list with the kind of action recorded.
The line has two controls at the end aloowing you to skip or pause selected steps as you playback the action. All this is stored in the actions palette with just the name of the overall action which you can then expand just like a folder tree and see the individual steps...
You can then either play the entire action or select just specific steps within that action to execute, pause or choose to stop on a specific step to examine your file or enter info into dialog popups then continue etc..
Allows you the edit your recorded actions too, which is not possible with macros in TP (yet )

something like this would be a major version upgrade, expect to pay
