Earlier today, Ted posted about a utility called Perfect Keyboard. It seemed pretty cool, so I downloaded the demo and started playing around. This looks pretty powerful. After getting over a little bit of a learning curve, I created a couple of class wizards for AS2 classes and AS3 Applications. This is pretty similar to what you get when you create a class in Flex Builder 2 or ASDT/FDT. Actually, all I’ve got it doing now it creating the text of the class itself, but it’s definitely got the capability to create folders, save files, etc. With a little more work, I could have something pretty powerful going, that would work in any text editor at all.
To demonstrate, I created a little video of the wizard in work. Check it out.
Keith,
There is a trick to returning text to avoid context menus in Eclipse. Basically you create 2 macros and have one call the other and paste the text vs type everything.
1. Create a base macro that displays dialog and returns text. Make sure that Settings > Paste Macro is checked!
2. Create another macro that calls the base macro and positions the cursor after the text is pasted. This macro will contain the text trigger.
Basically:
a. type “/basic”
b. a trigger macro runs, calls another macro that returns text via paste.
c. The trigger macro then positions the cursor.
This will avoid the context menus from popping up and allow you to place the cursor at a point within the pasted text. Its a bit of a hack but it makes the macros work very seamlessly with more advanced editors like Flex Builder, Eclipse, and Visual Studio. Plus the results are instant vs watching the keyboard auto-type!
Cheers,
Ted 🙂
I just test it a few. Sounds good but I notice some bad things.
The GUI of Perfect Keyboard is not very modern, look like a win98 application 🙂
Editing macro could be easier with a syntax highlighting of the function.
It seems that you need to replace the caret cursor by multiply the key press like :
(1)(1)(1)….
hmmmm…my French is terrible but I think the toolset is nice because it works in parallel to your existing editing tools. Code Completion, Intellisense, Eclipse Templates all work just fine for me.
On the UI, I much prefer it work well than be pretty. Plus its very simple and to the point and honestly I find I am spending more time using the macros than writing them. Actually pretty these days can make applications large and slow.
My 2 cents,
Ted 🙂