- Written and documented by David Deley

Introduction to CMac Chapter 11: Defining a key to run a macro
Test code is provided below as an attachment.)

Let's say we have a macro, such as the one we made in Introduction to CMAC. 2: Hello World II, and we're tired of running it via MACRO -> RUN... or clicking the toolbar button, and then typing in the name of the macro to run. We'd like to assign a key to run the macro. We can do this as follows:

Go to TOOLS -> CUSTOMIZE, set the left side to "General" (at the top):



Click on the "Keys/Commands..." button. Then scroll down to the bottom to the section "User-defined Operations" and click to highlight "User Macros":



Click "Insert" and fill in the fields as follows:



NAME: whatever you want to name it.

COMMAND LINE: mycmac^testhello
('mycmac' is the name of the .MAC file containing the macro 'testhello'. See Introduction to CMAC. 2: Hello World II for more info.)

TYPE: set to MACRO (See below for other options)

PRIMARY KEY: To set the primary key click the button to the right of the Primary Key field, then press the key you want to define. (In this example, I set the Primary Key field to CTRL-Z by holding the CTRL key down and pressing the Z key.)

Click OK when finished. You may get a message that CTRL-Z is already assigned to a different command (in our case CTRL-Z happens to already be assigned to the 'Undo' function). This is OK. Since we inserted our new command at the end of the Command Mapping list (under "User-defined Operations") our definition of the CTRL-Z key will supersede any definition of the key made above in the Command Mapping list. The last key definition in the list is what the key ends up being. Also, if we later decide to change our primary key to something else besides CTRL-Z, or delete our primary key definition, CTRL-Z will then revert back to its previous definition of 'Undo' as defined earlier in the Command Mapping list.

Now when you enter CTRL-Z the words "Hello World" will be entered into your current window as if you typed them in.

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OTHER OPTIONS FOR TYPE
'Type' can also be set to any of the following:

PROGRAM: Set 'Command Line' to the path and name of a .exe program you want to run. Enclose the entire path\filename in double quotes if there is a space in the path or filename.

HELP_FILE: Set 'Command Line' to the index title of a help topic in the Multi-Edit online help. For example, you could set the command line to "Using Regular Expressions" (without the quotes).

TEXT FILE: Set 'Command Line' to the path and name of a text file you want to load. Enclose the entire path\filename in double quotes if there is a space in the path or filename. (Tech details: Command_Line gets passed to routine LdFiles in macro MeSys.s . On entry MParm_Str= "/CW=1/FN=Command_Line". You can add other qualifiers accepted by LdFiles to the end of Command_Line.)

COMMAND: The documentation says, "This option must be selected for Multi-Edit to recognize that the command line refers to an internal Multi-Edit macro command." Internal Multi-Edit macro commands are apparently identified by number. To see what's available I suggest looking at the Command Map Report (See Introduction to CMAC. 6: Command Map Report) Look down the column labeled "T" (I think for Type), look for the number 5. Under the "Cursor Movement" heading there are a number of 5's. Then look for the corresponding number under the "Cmd" column (the last column). For example, "Cursor Down" is Multi-Edit internal command # 4, and "Cursor Up" is Multi-Edit internal command # 1.

So if you select COMMAND as the type, you could set 'Command Line' to the number 4, assign a key, and that key will perform a "Cursor Down" (what is normally assigned to the down arrow key).


MODE SHIFT: This is if you want to define a key sequence, such as keypad 7 followed by keypad 4. Here's an example. Below is the EDX keypad layout (available as an add-on, see Smooth Scroll, Scroll Margins, Editing Keypad (EDX) ):