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The Curse of the Advanced How is it that macros have come to take up residence in the domain of the advanced user? Who decided that only experts should be allowed to save time and perform fewer steps? Where is it written that beginners should have to do everything the hard way? These are rhetorical questions, but your fearless backpage columnist has answers to them nonetheless. * Automate = Advanced: There are a few words that are turbocharged with connotation in the computing industry, and they all seem to revolve around the notion that creating automatic processes is necessarily hard to do. Automating sequences creating turnkey solutions scripting procedures it sounds as if you should have some sort of advanced degree to do these things. Most computer users think you have to know all of the basic commands before you can (pause for dramatic effect and lower you voice one note) automate. This is absurd. Did you know that you can hold Shift while restarting Windows 95 and it won't reboot your system, but only restart Windows? That is an automatic sequence, and oh boy, it sure is advanced. Hold Shift wow! * The Tools Suck: The most deplorable reason for this misconception is the lack of decent macro tools at the operating system level, by Microsoft or any other vendor. There is no justification for users to be forced to learn Visual Basic (which is advanced) in order to write good macros. Most of the time, all we need is a simple keystroke macro utility, not a programming language. Don't even talk to me about the anemic Windows Recorder, which has no after-the-fact editing capability and was a complete embarrassment to Microsoft from the moment it was released. Veteran PC users might remember fondly programs like SmartKey and ProKey, which allowed you to record macros, edit them, and play them back without having to learn anything more than a simple sequence of menu commands. It is beyond imagination that no such tools exist now in widespread fashion. If any readers know of a good one, retail or shareware, let me know and I'll publicize it as widely as I can. * DRAW Users Have Done Without: CorelDRAW users have plenty of reasons to be gun-shy with scripts and macros. Corel offered a perfectly fine macro recorder integrated into the program but that was back in version 2.0. Since then, members of the development teams have wandered from one strategy to another, usually succeeding only in bumping into each other. Let's look at the mine field that has defined Corel's efforts to offer macros: 1) You can save fill patterns as "presets"; 2) You can save extrusions as "presets," but these are different than the fill presets, even though they have the same name; 3) You can create an automated sequence of commands, and oops, they are also called presets; 4) In all cases, these presets are stored invisibly in places that normal users wouldn't dare venture; and finally, 5) The script tool introduced in version 6.0 is rocket science for all but the most maniacal of users. |
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