Update a Macro

[TEcHNOpls]

Hi,

is there a easy way to update a macro, I was able to edit the one I have but now I can't save back into it easily.

I can add the updated macro to the library, but I can't choose my old from the list or anything so it's like adding a new one my only option? More confusing is that these can have the same name and I can see which is which by the number of steps.

[TEcHNOpls]

This is especially annoying as I'm updating two similar macros at one time.

[carl123]

Not sure I understand

Why not just right click the old macro and delete it or rename it

[TEcHNOpls]

Yeah, that's the thing I'm doing now. But when I Edit a macro, I'd like to save back in the the same macro, not create a new one.

[R C-R]

I also find this annoying & unintuitive. After all, the Library UI says "Edit Macro," so why can't we just edit an existing one without the extra steps of creating a new one, selecting which category to add it to, & then deleting the old one? One more button on the Macro panel in addition to the "Add To Library" one that simply updated the macro would be one way to do that & I suspect it would be relatively easy to implement.

[v_kyr]

Hmm just speculating here, but maybe this is technically due to the used/choosen macro file format which might not allow to easily exchange or enhance a certain available code portion inside it's structures/categories. Thus an edit might be more like adding and/or removing instead of an exchange portion. - BTW are the macros compressed and do they keep or are they conncected to the overall history flow here?

[TEcHNOpls]

Like, if I edit a macro I could at least select an old macro to overwrite.

[R C-R]

22 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Hmm just speculating here, but maybe this is technically due to the used/choosen macro file format which might not allow to easily exchange or enhance a certain available code portion inside it's structures/categories. Thus an edit might be more like adding and/or removing instead of an exchange portion.

We can delete a macro from the Library panel, so I do not think there is anything in the format that would make it difficult to delete the old version & replace it with the new one in one step.

25 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

BTW are the macros compressed and do they keep or are they conncected to the overall history flow here?

At least on Macs, I believe all the saved macros are stored in a single "macros.propcol" file, which appears to be binary, so it is at least somewhat compressed compared to say an xml formatted plist file. I am not sure what you mean about the history but each macro appears in the History panel as a single step with the macro's name.

[v_kyr]

53 minutes ago, R C-R said:

We can delete a macro from the Library panel, so I do not think there is anything in the format that would make it difficult to delete the old version & replace it with the new one in one step.

Seems I didn't expressed well what I meant, I meant here according to what you reported being as: "...just edit an existing one without the extra steps of creating a new one...". Which in my understanding would mean to be able to enhance/rework an existing one then without deleting and exchanging it with another one. So to say the usual meaning of editing, similar as you would change, add or remove only selected lines or expressions inside some text code portion/paragraph.

53 minutes ago, R C-R said:

At least on Macs, I believe all the saved macros are stored in a single "macros.propcol" file, which appears to be binary, so it is at least somewhat compressed compared to say an xml formatted plist file. I am not sure what you mean about the history but each macro appears in the History panel as a single step with the macro's name.

Ok so far, either it might be a custom binary format then and/or maybe also PK zipped etc. to be more compact size wise. But what is with the single steps inside ONE macro here, I mean are single individual steps visible/listed as being part of a certain macro so you can see step for step what operation it does and thus how these have been sequentially recorded? Further does the history panel also list or is in sync with these single steps when they are recorded or played back?

[R C-R]

27 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Seems I didn't expressed well what I meant, I meant here according to what you reported being as: "...just edit an existing one without the extra steps of creating a new one...". Which in my understanding would mean to be able to enhance/rework an existing one then without deleting and exchanging it with another one. So to say the usual meaning of editing, similar as you would change, add or remove only selected lines or expressions inside some text code portion/paragraph.

In terms of storing the saved macro, it still has to be rewritten or somehow flagged to include the edit, so it is not much different from deleting the previous version & replacing it with the edited one. Either way, the "macros.propcol" file has to be modified.

 

32 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

But what is with the single steps inside ONE macro here, I mean are single individual steps visible/listed as being part of a certain macro so you can see step for step what operation it does and thus how these have been sequentially recorded?

Yes, they are listed in the Macro panel by a step name the app assigns to that operation, but only some of them expose values that can be edited.

 

34 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Further does the history panel also list or is in sync with these single steps when they are recorded or played back?

No, as I said, each macro appears in the History panel as a single entry identified by the name given to the macro by the user.

[v_kyr]

Ok would probably have to download a demo version, in order to see and get an closer idea of what it finally does offer or not here in this regard. - Let's hope there will some day also be something like a real scripting engine (API) here, which then hopefully allows some finer and enhanced control.

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, v_kyr said:

Ok would probably have to download a demo version, in order to see and get an closer idea of what it finally does offer or not here in this regard.

There are also several video tutorials that would give you a good idea of how macros work. Macros (Affinity Photo) is the most basic (on You Tube or Vimeo). It is about 7 minutes long & covers the fundamentals.

 

There is also the Affinity Photo - Macros: Layer Behaviour one (You Tube or Vimeo), which includes some tips about making sure macro steps target the desired layer & what I believe is the only official documentation that mentions that a macro records & plays back the settings of the Assistant Manager in use at the time of the recording.

[v_kyr]

Those are useful for overall usage, but probably of no help if you want to find out and inspect instead what goes on and happens inside a macro file itself. Meaning if the file expands or shrinks on delete and restructures here. That's something best tried out with a running version and some hex editor etc. beneath.

[R C-R]

30 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Those are useful for overall usage, but probably of no help if you want to find out and inspect instead what goes on and happens inside a macro file itself.

As I mentioned earlier, macros are not stored in individual files for use within the app. You can export an individual macro to an .afmacro file or a macros category to an .afmacros file but like the "macros.propcol" file all of these files are binary so there isn't much you can find out about how they work by examining them.

[TEcHNOpls]

Also, this could be a overhaul of other "problematic" interfaces like export presets (again, updating or such is tedious).

[v_kyr]

That depends on the used formats and it's structure capabilities. ATN files for example offer a bunch of manageable things even they are binary files too, like rearranging, duplicate, delete, rename or alter commands or command sets etc. So I can imagine that the AP macro structure may allow quite in principlesimilar things here.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, v_kyr said:

That depends on the used formats and it's structure capabilities.

The structure does not have any recognizable step names or anything like that, & I suspect tokens, offset pointers, & such are involved. Maybe they could be parsed but I doubt it would be easy.

[Polygonius]

Deleting an existing macro as it all, is not the work, but the impossibility to delete (or edit, or add...) just one step inside a "big-macro"... thats whats really annoying.

To re-create the same macro, with just 2 edits is work for prisoners...

[v_kyr]

That's one of the many reasons a scripting engine would be generally more useful to have.

[TEcHNOpls]

I'd say a better editor would do the stuff most of the time, pause a script, add steps, move order of steps, save back.

[aldan]

any recent development in the macro area?