Spit-balling MEP utility

[Cory]

Alexis brought to mind something I've been thinking about. I've been considering writing a simple compiled app to extend MEP. The shortcoming is that you cant wait for any key to be pressed then pass that key as a parameter. EG I want to be able to prompt the user for an action and if they press the letter "A" do one thing and if they press "B" do something different. The app would simply pass back the letter to MEP. I imagine using the textbox control MEP would get the letter value back. Or perhaps an extended function where the user enters a series of characters followed by an Enter. This would then be a sort of 'command line' for MEP. How this could be cool is we could also scope macros to it just to accept hotkeys. IE it would be launched by one hotkey (not using MEP) and then whatever is typed next could activate a macro using scoped activation. This would make the number of viable combinations nearly endless.

 

Thinking more on it as I write I could accept command line parameters as well. This way it would work in several modes. A macro hotkey launch, user 'any-key' input, or MEP command line.

 

Does anyone think they might be interested in something like this?

[paul]

The shortcoming is that you cant wait for any key to be pressed then pass that key as a parameter. EG I want to be able to prompt the user for an action and if they press the letter "A" do one thing and if they press "B" do something different.

Well, that's not really true. I have written a suite of 36 keypress macros (one for each numeric and alpha key, identical except for the keystroke being waited for), plus 3 menu and control macros. The net effect is that I can specify which keys I want to wait for, how long to wait, and report back to the originating macro which key, if any, was pressed.

 

If you're interested, I can readily make them available to you.

[Cory]

I appreciate there are ways to work around this problem but I was thinking of something more elegant. Whats' more my app I'm suggesting would do much more than that solving 3 or 4 common complaints I hear here in the forum. I'm surprised that there was only one response but even no feedback is good feedback so now I know not to waste my time writing any simple stand-alone apps to extend MEP. There is simple no interest.Too bad I had several ideas I could have written into something like this. EG sorting arrays. Casting variables, especially various string to time. I'm amazed at how well VB will take almost any string that looks like a date in any order and successfully cast it into a serial time value all in one command. I've written routines to do these things in MEP but they often take dozens of lines of code to do what is a single simple fast and more powerful command in VB.NET. But thanks for the offer.

[paul]

 

I tried this a while back. I too had lots of ideas about encapsulating capabilities using AutoIt that MEP either cannot do, or does badly.

But, like you, I discovered almost no interest. And it looks to me as if Macro Express is not being developed further, which doesn't bode well for the future.

[Cory]

The forum does seem rather quite compared to the old days and I get the feeling there are fewer active users. One thought I had was that there are several shortcomings that lead people to try alternatives and that if one could address some of these with a simple .NET based app it might make it more desirable. Maybe it's just too late.

 

I use MEP a lot less these days but that's mainly because all along my applications of it were more industrial-strength and out of MEP's depth. I never did write a bunch of simple user macros because I was always so busy with writing big ones that ran independent of the GUI. Now I'm replacing most of those big macros with simple .NET applications. So I guess I too found a better alternative. But I still think for someone automating small day to day tasks MEP is a viable product.

 

If there ever is an interest I think it would be better if it wasn't dependent on a costly third party app though. Meh, seems the point is moot anyway.