Friday, April 23, 2004
Macros.. a little slow on the uptake
I've been using IDEs (mainly Delphi) for nearly 6 years, but I've only recently discovered the joys of keystroke macros. For the uninitiated, they provide the mechanism to save a series of keystrokes which can then be repeatedly played back. Very nice. I first started using them in VS.NET 2003 to assist with the creating of properties from cut'n'pasted member declarations, and since then have never looked back. Here are some common keyboard shortcuts to assist with using them:
Delphi 5 (Default Key Mapping)
Ctrl+Shift+R - Start/stop recording macro
Ctrl+Shift+P - Play back macro
Visual Studio.NET 2003 (Default Key Mapping)
Ctrl+Shift+R - Start/stop recording macro
Ctrl+Shift+P - Play back macro
Alt+F8 - Macros Explorer
Alt+F11 - Macros IDE
Visual Studio also gives the ability to save custom macros, which is a very handy feature. There is a Quality Central request for it to be implemented in the Delphi IDE here.
