For convenience, two more directives are available for adding a macro to TrEd's User-defined menu and for assigning a keyboard shortcut to macro.
To connect the my_first_macro with a new menu item labeled My First Macro under the User-defined menu, the following directive should appear in some macro file read by TrEd:
#insert my_first_macro as menu My First Macro
Actually the words as and menu may be omitted, so it is possible to write the above directive also as:
#insert my_first_macro as My First Macro
or even
#insert my_first_macro My First Macro
To make the macro accessible via a keyboard shortcut, the #bind directive may be used. Thus, to “bind” the my_first_macro macro to say Ctrl+Alt+Del keyboard shortcut, the following line should appear somewhere in the macro file:
#bind my_first_macro to key Ctrl+Alt+Del
Again, the to and key words may be omitted.
Warning
Using the shortcut chosen here as an example is probbably not a good idea, as it is a shortcut that restarts the system on many computers. Remember, that only shortcuts which are not interpreted by the operating system or desktop environment may be assigned to TrEd's macros and work correctly.
If both the menu item and keyboard shortcut are needed for a macro, the following abbreviated form can be used:
#bind my_first_macro to key Ctrl+Alt+Del menu My First Macro
If more than one keyboard shortcuts or menu items are connected with the same macro, any of them may be used to invoke the macro. If more than one macro was assigned the same keyboard shortcut, the latest binding appearing in the macro files is used. Also, if two or more macros with the same name appear in the loaded macro files, the last one is used.
#unbind-key Ctrl+Alt+Del
The above directive may be used to remove an existing key-bindning from current binding context(s). It is especially useful for disabling certain functionality and bindings of an incuded macro file.
#remove-menu My First Macro
The above directive may be used to remove an existing menu item from current binding context(s). It is especially useful for disabling certain functionality and bindings of an incuded macro file.
When an interactively invoked macro returns,
TrEd automatically activates the
node referenced by variable $this, redraws
displayed tress according to the value of the
$Redraw variable changes file status to
modified (as indicated by the state of the
button) unless
variable $FileChanged is altered in the
way described below (both variables are definded in
tred.def, see Section 9.7).
The $Redraw variable may has the following values:
- file (the default)
redraw all windows displaying current file
- tree
redraw all windows displaying current tree
- win
redraw current window
- all
redraw all windows
- tie
redraw all windows if TrEd windows are tied otherwise redraw only the current one
- none
disables redrawing
To prevent TrEd from considering the file modified by a specific macro, the macro must explicitly set a special variable named $FileChanged to zero.
To make things even more complicated, btred, the off-line variant of TrEd, never saves any processed file unless the variable $FileChanged has been explicitely set to 1 or -S command-line switch is used.
Note
If the state of the file was considered modified and not saved when a macro was interactively invoked, any changes to the $FileChanged variable made by the macro are ignored. Macro may force the file status to saved by setting $forceFileSaved variable to 1.
Note
For historical reasons, there exists an alias for $FileChanged named $FileNotSaved. These variables are identical.