HI,
Not sure exactly Tropic is doing either, but I thought I throw out example of a loopy macro.
In most programs if you hold Shift down and hit the right arrow on characters you will select them. So if Tropic is needing to save the first 78 or 72, that is one way to do it.
Select the characters, copy, then save them to a variable.
Try it in your web browser do this...
alt + d -- to highlight your address bar.
home -- to put your cursor in the front of the address
Then hold down shift and hit the right arrow. If should start selecting characters.
You can select the entire line and use modify command like you said. Probably could ways to do it. Depending on what Topic is actually doing