The World of Computer Software/World_Of_Computer_Software-02-387-Vol-3of3.iso/q/qedtips1.zip/TECH2.MSG

Text File | 1992-06-24 | 6KB | 126 lines

          A QEdit Tip from the SemWare Technical Support Staff

                        .. QMac: The Basic's ..

        QMac is a translator of QEdit macro files.  It translates QEdit
        macros from the binary file in which QEdit saves macros to a
        text file which allows easy macro editing, and translates such
        text files back into a QEdit binary file.

        This allows you to "record" a macro using QEdit; fine-tune it by
        editing the text representation of the macro; and then translate
        the edited version and reload it into QEdit for replay.

        QMac allows appending to or overwriting existing files, making
        it easy to add new macros to existing files. QMac's text file
        format allows comments, permitting documentation of the macros
        within their "source file".

        To see a summary of QMac's operations, type "QMAC ?" at the DOS
        prompt and press Return.  All of the command line switches are
        optional and are only necessary to control QMac's operation in
        special ways.

        Here is quick run-through of what you can do with QMac,
        including recording a macro, saving it to disk, and converting
        it with QMac.  The keystrokes mentioned below assume you are
        using the default QCONFIG.DAT supplied with QEdit; if you have
        re-installed your keyboard using QCONFIG, please modify as
        needed.

        Recording a Macro:
        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
        1. From inside QEdit, select MacroRecord.  (Either hit <Ctrl M>
        or select "Macro record" from the "Macro" menu in the pull-down
        menu system, by pressing <Escape><M><M>).

        2. At the prompt that says "Assign to what key:" press a key to
        redefine.  We will use <Ctrl F10>

        3. Press Find <Ctrl QF>, type "the" and press Return, and type
        "IW" and press Return again.  (This is just an example of what
        you can do, you could of course record any legal series of QEdit
        keystrokes here.)

        4. Select MacroRecord again to end the macro, like step 1 above.

        5. Now, you can press <Ctrl F10> to search for the word "the" in
        your text in just one step.

        Saving the Macro:
        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
        6. Let's write this macro to disk in a file that QMac can use.
        Select MacroWrite from the pull down menus, by pressing <Escape>
        then <M><W>.

        7. Give it a filename of "FIND.MAC", and press Return to save
        this macro on disk.

        Converting the Macro to Text:
        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
        8. Press Dos <Alt F9> to send a command to MS-DOS. Type:

             QMAC FIND.MAC FIND.TXT /A- /T

        to convert FIND.MAC to a text form in the file FIND.TXT. Press
        Return.  (The /T selects text output).

        9. Press EditFile <Alt E> to load this file into QEdit. Type
        "FIND.TXT" to load the text file you just created with QMac.
        Press Return.  You should see something like this on the screen:

             * * Converted by QMAC from: C:\FIND.MAC * ^f10
             MacroBegin Find "the" Return "IW" Return

        Which is, of course, a text representation of the keystrokes you
        just recorded.

        10. You can now edit your macro if need be.  Let's change the
        word "the" to "and", and save the file back to disk by pressing
        File <Ctrl KX>.

        Converting the Macro from Text back to Binary:
        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
        11. Press Dos <Alt F9> to send a another command to MS- DOS.
        This time, type:

             QMAC FIND.MAC FIND.TXT /A- /B

        to convert FIND.TXT back to its BINARY form, FIND.MAC. (NOTE
        that we use /B to tell QMac to make the binary file from the
        text file we just edited).  Press Return.

        QMac Additional Notes:
        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
        QMac will create whichever of the two files (binary or text)
        that did not exist already:  If the text macros already exist,
        it will convert them to binary.  Or if the binary macros already
        exist, it will convert them to text.

        However, if both files exist, you must supply one of the
        optional switches to determine the direction.  The switch /B
        tells QMac to create a Binary file, while /T tells it to create
        a text file.

        If the output file already exists, you must also supply a /A+ or
        /A- switch to tell QMac whether to "append" to the existing
        file. With /A+ it will append, /A- tells QMac to overwrite the
        existing file.

        Anywhere an asterisk ("*") appears on a line, outside of a
        quoted string, the rest of the line is treated as a "comment"
        and is ignored by QMac.  You can use this to include notes to
        yourself about how your macros work, or what they are supposed
        to do.  Comments are not included in the binary macro file that
        QEdit loads, so there is no penalty for including them in your
        text macro files.

        A macro can continue onto more than one line, simply indent the
        second and subsequent lines of the macro one or more spaces.
        The macro continues until QMac runs out of text or encounters
        another key at the beginning of a subsequent line.

        Lines in your text macro files can be up to 512 characters long.

        Matthew Giles (SemWare Technical Support)