Can I add a macro in Quartz Composer to the Patch Creator, so I can add it to all my compositions?
Yes. There are two ways you can do this:
Save the macro as a composition, and place the composition file in <your home folder>/Library/Graphics/Quartz Composer Patches. After you restart Quartz Composer, it'll appear in the Patch Creator.
Caveat: When you use a macro saved this way, a reference is created (rather than copying the actual contents of the macro), so you'll need to manually install the macro in order for it to work.
In Mac OS 10.6 and later, you can create a Virtual Macro. Select the patches you want to make into the Virtual Macro, go to the Editor menu, and "Add to Library".
Caveat: When you use a Virtual Macro, a copy will be embedded with the using composition, however these compositions will only work on 10.6 and later.
smokris has a good response although I find myself having to read it several times to get what it means! If you want to build a single patch out of pre-existing patches: Hit Add to Library, making sure you have selected all the patches you want to consolidate and the published the inputs outputs you want, etc (smokris option 2). I've made some of these "power patches" with only the relevant parameters/features I want. You lose the individual patches you've connected, which is maybe ok to make things concise.
IF you want to preserve the entire composition and configured patches so you can tweak and rewire them, then manually import it (smorkis option 1). What a hassle!
--BUT it doesn't have to be. If you use Automator, you can include an Apple Script step to do all the importing for you! For example, write one that:
*get specified finder items (your qtz composition you want to import)
*opens finder items
*run apple script:
on run {input, parameters}
tell application "Finder"
do shell script "jay is incredible"
end tell
tell application "System Events"
keystroke "a" using command down
keystroke "c" using command down
keystroke "`" using command down
keystroke "v" using command down
delay 1
end tell
return input
end run
*open finder items
*run apple script:
on run {input, parameters}
tell application "System Events"
keystroke "w" using command down
end tell
return input
end run
That way, you can open that Automator application via Spotlight (command spacebar) and it'll import the composition in 1-2 clicks. Awesome huh!!
Related
I have created some scripts in (Iron)Python that help me with the generation of a lot of the boilercode in my project. However, every thime I change something in some part of my project, I have to rerun those scripts. Right now, every thime I have to go to the menu -> Tools -> Scripting -> Execute script File... and navigate to the script in the File Explorer.
However, I go into Tools -> Customize... I can see that there are listings for Script0, Script1 and etc. They are also available in the keyboard shorcut bindings. This suggests to me that there must be a way toadd ToolMenu entries and key shortcuts to run predefined scripts, however all of them have "(unavailable)" written next to them, and I can't figure any way to configure them and make them do something.
Does anybody know how to make use of them?
Follow this instruction:
https://content.helpme-codesys.com/en/CODESYS%20Development%20System/_cds_executing_scripts_toolbar.html
Note:
What you see in "Add commands" under "Scripting Commands" is a alphabetic index list of your script file names. That means if no scripts are active linked in config.json then the count of maximal possible 32 scripts are listed under alphabetic index "S" as "Script0(unavailable)" to "Script31(unavailable)". If linked one script in config.json then is listed under alphabetic index and "Script0(unavailable)" is hidden.
Didn't realise that macros libraries written in the latest version 4.27 wouldnt work in 4.26.
Is there not a way to make to make it work?
Ben
As Ken White stated:
Not if they use features that didn't exist in 4.26.
It is possible using a manual process:
Open each Macro in 4.27, Take note of the Input and Output Pins.
Select all nodes in the body. Press CTRL-C
Create a corresponding macro in 4.26, Add the Input and Output Pins.
With the mouse in the Blueprint area, press CTRL-V to paste the body.
I use the plugin SimpleSession with Sublime Text 3 (but any plugin could be considered). If I save a session with multiple windows, this creates a .simplesession file. How can I open that session file just by clicking on the file? The goal is to avoid having to launch ST3 and use the Command Palette to run the "Load Session" command. Currently, clicking on the .simplesession file causes ST3 to open it as a regular file.
Sublime doesn't know that a simplesession file is important in any way, so double clicking on one is going to open it the same as Sublime would open any other file.
Since it's a plugin that created the file, that plugin is the only thing that knows that it's special and what to do with it. So what you really need is the way to tell the plugin to take the action for you.
All actions in Sublime (including things as simple as inserting text) are taken by executing a command. Here that would be a command in the plugin that created the file in question, which would tell it that you want to carry out the action you would normally take manually, such as loading a session.
To do that from within Sublime you'd do something like bind a keyboard key to the appropriate command, add it to a menu, the command palette, etc. If you want to take the action from outside of Sublime, then you need to communicate that command to Sublime in order to get it to execute.
In core Sublime you can do this by executing the subl program that ships with Sublime and tell it a plugin command that you would like to execute.
Although it's possible to do this, the solution provided here has the requirement that Sublime already be running due to technical limitations within Sublime itself, but more on that in a moment.
This answer will give you the information that you need to formulate the command line that you need to execute in order to get the plugin command to run and carry out the action that you desire.
If you want to run this command in response to double clicking a file of a particular type (here a simplesession file), how you do that is specific to the operating system and file browser that you're using, and is best asked as a separate question.
Assuming you instead want a level of integration where you just have a desktop shortcut, start menu entry, etc that does this, this is more straight forward because such a shortcut is really just a visual wrapper that executes a command of your choosing.
Again, how you would do that is different depending on your OS, but the important part is knowing what full command line you need to give to the shortcut to be able to run it, which is what this answer tells you how to construct.
Important Note: The specific package in your question implements a load_session command, which prompts you for the session to load from a list of sessions you've previously created.
This command doesn't take any argument that would tell it what session to load without asking you to pick one first. As a result, what you want isn't technically possible without more work because there's no way to directly tell the load_session command the file that you want to open.
In order to more fully automate things in this particular case, the underlying package needs to be modified. In particular either the load_session command would need an optional argument which, when given, would cause it to load that session without prompting first, or
a new command would need to be created to do the same thing.
If you're not comfortable or knowledgeable enough to make such modifications to the package directly, you need to either find someone that will do that for you or (even better) discuss it with the package author, since that is a feature that others would probably enjoy as well.
The first thing you need to know is, "What command in the plugin is the one that I need to execute to do what I want?". In some cases you may already know exactly what command you need to use because it's documented, or you have already made a custom key binding for it, and so on.
If you don't know the command you need to use, check the documentation on the package (if any) to see if it mentions them. In your particular case, the README on the package page specifically mentions a list of commands, of which load_session seems like the most appropriate fit.
Lacking any documentation, the next easiest thing to do would be to ask Sublime directly. To do this, select View > Show Console from the menu or press the keyboard shortcut associated with it, Ctrl+`. In the console that appears, enter the following command and press enter.
sublime.log_commands(True)
Now whenever you do anything, this console is going to show you exactly what command Sublime is executing, along with any arguments that it may be passing to the command. This remains in effect until you use the same command with False or restart Sublime.
With logging turned on, select the appropriate command from the command palette and see what the Console says.
For example, with this package installed, I get output like the following:
>>> sublime.log_commands(True)
command: show_overlay {"overlay": "command_palette"}
command: load_session
This is showing two commands; first I opened the command palette which uses the show_overlay command, and then I selected the SimpleSession: Load command, which is the load_session command with no arguments.
In order to get Sublime to execute the command from the command line, you use the --command command line argument to subl. So in order to get Sublime to run the load_session command, you can enter the following command in a command prompt/terminal in your OS. This is also the command you would set in your desktop shortcut.
subl --command "load_session"
This presumes that you've set up Sublime so that it's in the path (how you do that is OS specific). If running subl in a terminal gives you an error about a missing command, either add the Sublime install directory to the path or use a fully qualified file name in place of subl (e,g. "C:\Program Files\Sublime Text 3\subl" if you're on Windows); either requires you to know what location Sublime is installed in.
If you want to use a command that takes arguments you need to include the arguments in the command as well, in the same way as they were displayed in the console above.
It's important that the command name and the arguments all be considered one command line argument, which requires you to wrap the whole thing in quote characters, since otherwise the spaces will make it appear as multiple arguments.
If you forget this, Sublime will respond by opening files named after the different parts of the command and arguments that you tried to open under the mistaken belief that you're giving it files to open.
As a concrete example, to get Sublime to open the command palette from outside of Sublime, the command to do this would look like the following if you were on Linux/MacOS:
subl --command 'show_overlay {"overlay": "command_palette"}'
Note again that we are passing exactly what the console showed above, but the whole thing, command and arguments, are wrapped in single quotes so that the terminal knows that the entire value is one argument.
This makes things a little tricky on Windows, which doesn't allow single quotes. On that platform you need to use double quotes instead. This requires you to "quote" the internal double quotes with a leading \ character so that the command processor knows that they're part of the argument and not the double quote that ends the argument.
For the case of opening the command palette on Windows, the command thus looks like this:
subl --command "show_overlay {\"overlay\": \"command_palette\"}"
With this information in hand, you can set up something like a desktop shortcut to run the appropriate command, or potentially set up the file explorer that you're using to execute a command specifically when you double click on a file of your choosing.
Again, how you would do that is specific to the operating system that you're using, and so I'm not really covering that in depth here in this answer. Just keep in mind that regardless of the OS in question, the part that remains the same is that you need to use subl command like the above.
Now, in your particular case, if the package that you're using provided a command that would let it load the session directly without prompting you first, the command that you use would need to also include the name of the session file as one of the command arguments.
However, as I mentioned above, this package doesn't currently allow that at the moment.
Now, here is the GIANT CAVEAT with this whole thing; this only works if Sublime is already running.
The subl command talks to an existing running copy of Sublime and gives it commands to open a file, directory, run a command as we're doing here, and so on. If Sublime isn't already running, then subl will start Sublime first and then communicate these details to it.
Sublime starts and makes it's interface available to you to work right away, and then starts to load packages and plugins in the background. This is to get you in and working on your files without having to wait for all packages to load first.
An issue with this is that as soon as Sublime starts, subl passes off the appropriate commands and then quits, and since packages aren't loaded yet, the command that you want to execute doesn't exist yet (hasn't been loaded), so nothing actually happens.
Unfortunately there's not really a satisfactory way around this particular issue if you want to start Sublime and also execute commands.
A potential workaround would be use something like a script or batch file that would check to see if Sublime is already running, and if not Start it and delay a little bit to allow plugins to finish loading, then use subl to run the command.
However this would require you to basically guess how long it takes Sublime to finish loading, which is less than ideal.
I'm currently working on a project and an I used several print commands in order to see if all is going well.
But all these prints take some execution time and since the program is running well I was wondering if there is a way to comment or delete all of those commands at once.
Generally you can perform a "Replace in Projects...".
Presuming you code in JAVA:
Goto "Edit > Replace in Projects"
Set "Containing Text" to System.out.print
Set "Match" to Literal
Set "Replace with" to //System.out.print
Choose your Scope (Project)
Hit Continue
It is easy as that. Not even a need for Regular expression.
Have Fun.
In Matlab I can start external .exe files that sometime have a pop up that requires an enter key pressed. For example:
system('C:\Program Files (x86)\WinZip\WINZIP32.EXE')
will start Winzip, and then in order to use it you need to pass the "buy now" pop up window by pressing enter.
Now my problem is not with winzip, I only gave it as an example (i use winrar anyway :).
How can I programmatically press an enter key in Matlab in such cases ? (I use win 7)
Can an event listener be used to solve that?
EDIT: The java.awt.Robot class indeed works on explorer, but not on any software that has a pop up window with an OK button that needs to be pressed. I don't know why it doesn't work for that. I gave the winzip example because I assume everybody has winzip/winrar installed in their machine. The actual software I have is different and irrelevant for the question.
There is a way using Java from Matlab, specifically the java.awt.Robot class. See here.
Apparently there are two types of programs, regarding the way they work when called from Matlab with system('...'):
For some programs, Matlab waits until the program has finished before running the next statement. This happens for example with WinRAR (at least in my Windows 7 machine).
For other programs this doesn't happen, and Matlab proceeds with the next statement right after the external program has been started. An example of this type is explorer (the standard Windows file explorer).
Now, it is possible to return execution to Matlab immediately even for type 1 programs: just add & at the end of the string passed to system. This is standard in Linux Bash shell, and it also works in Windows, as discussed here.
So, you would proceed as follows:
robot = java.awt.Robot;
command = '"C:\Program Files (x86)\WinRAR\WinRAR"'; %// external program; full path
system([command ' &']); %// note: ' &' at the end
pause(5) %// allow some time for the external program to start
robot.keyPress (java.awt.event.KeyEvent.VK_ENTER); %// press "enter" key
robot.keyRelease (java.awt.event.KeyEvent.VK_ENTER); %// release "enter" key
If your applications are only on Windows platform, you can try using .net objects.
The SendWait method of the SendKeys objects allows to send virtually any key, or key combination, to the application which has the focus, including the "modifier" keys like Alt, Shift, Ctrl etc ...
The first thing to do is to import the .net library, then the full syntax to send the ENTER key would be:
NET.addAssembly('System.Windows.Forms');
System.Windows.Forms.SendKeys.SendWait('{ENTER}'); %// send the key "ENTER"
If you only do it once the full syntax is OK. If you plan to make extensive use of the command, you can help yourself with an anonymous helper function.
A little example with notepad
%% // import the .NET assembly and define helper function
NET.addAssembly('System.Windows.Forms');
sendkey = #(strkey) System.Windows.Forms.SendKeys.SendWait(strkey) ;
%% // prepare a few things to send to the notepad
str1 = 'Hello World' ;
str2 = 'OMG ... my notepad is alive' ;
file2save = [pwd '\SelfSaveTest.txt'] ;
if exist(file2save,'file')==2 ; delete(file2save) ; end %// this is just in case you run the test multiple times.
%% // go for it
%// write a few things, save the file then close it.
system('notepad &') ; %// Start notepad, without matlab waiting for the return value
sendkey(str1) %// send a full string to the notepad
sendkey('{ENTER}'); %// send the {ENTER} key
sendkey(str2) %// send another full string to the notepad
sendkey('{! 3}'); %// note how you can REPEAT a key send instruction
sendkey('%(FA)'); %// Send key combination to open the "save as..." dialog
pause(1) %// little pause to make sure your hard drive is ready before continuing
sendkey(file2save); %// Send the name (full path) of the file to save to the dialog
sendkey('{ENTER}'); %// validate
pause(3) %// just wait a bit so you can see you file is now saved (check the titlebar of the notepad)
sendkey('%(FX)'); %// Bye bye ... close the Notepad
As explained in the Microsoft documentation the SendKeys class may have some timing issues sometimes so if you want to do complex manipulations (like Tab multiple times to change the button you actually want to press), you may have to introduce a pause in your Matlab calls to SendKeys.
Try without first, but don't forget you are managing a process from another without any synchronization between them, so timing all that can require a bit of trial and error before you get it right, at least for complex sequences (simple one should be straightforward).
In my case above for example I am running all my data from an external hard drive with an ECO function which puts it into standby, so when I called the "save as..." dialog, it takes time for it to display because the HDD has to wake up. If I didn't introduce the pause(1), sometimes the file path would be imcomplete (the first part of the path was send before the dialog had the focus).
Also, do not forget the & character when you execute the external program. All credit to Luis Mendo for highlighting it. (I tend to forget how important it is because I use it by default. I only omit it if I have to specifically wait for a return value from the program, otherwise I let it run on its own)
The special characters have a special code. Here are a few:
Shift +
Control (Ctrl) ^
Alt %
Tab {TAB}
Backspace {BACKSPACE}, {BS}, or {BKSP}
Validation {ENTER} or ~ (a tilde)
Ins Or Insert {INSERT} or {INS}
Delete {DELETE} or {DEL}
Text Navigation {HOME} {END} {PGDN} {PGUP}
Arrow Keys {UP} {RIGHT} {DOWN} {LEFT}
Escape {ESC}
Function Keys {F1} ... {F16}
Print Screen {PRTSC}
Break {BREAK}
The full list from Microsoft can be found here
There is a small javascript utility that simulates keystrokes like this on the Windows javascript interpreter.
Just create a js file with following code:
var WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell");
WshShell.SendKeys(WScript.Arguments(0));
then call it from Matlab after the necessary timeout like this:
system('c:\my\js\file\script.js {Enter}');
Can't test here now, but I think this should work...
If you need to run a console-only program in a context that permits full DOS redirection, you can create a file called, say, CR.txt containing a carriage return and use the '<' notation to pipe the value into the program.
This only works if you can provide all the keyboard input can be recorded in the file. It fails dismally if the input has to vary based on responses.
An alternative is to duplicate the input (and possibly output) stream(s) for the program and then pipe data into and out of the program. This is more robust and can permit dynamic responses to the data, but will also likely require substantial effort to implement a robot user to the application.
Rog-O-Matic is an example of a large application completely controlled by a program that monitors screen output and simulates keyboard input to play an early (1980s) ASCII graphic adventure game.
The other responses will be required for GUI-based applications.
Python package pywinauto can wait any dialog and click buttons automatically. But it's capable for native and some .NET applications only. You may have problems with pressing WPF button (maybe QT button is clickable - not checked), but in such case code like app.DialogTitle.wait('ready').set_focus(); app.DialogTitle.type_keys('{ENTER}') may help. Your case is quite simple and probably some tricks with pywinauto are enough. Is your "app with popup" 64-bit or 32-bit?
wait and wait_not functions have timeout parameter. But if you need precisely listener with potentially infinite loop awaiting popups, good direction is global Windows hooks (pyHook can listen mouse and keybd events, but cannot listen dialog opening). I'll try to find my prototype that can detect new windows. It uses UI Automation API event handlers... and... ops... it requires IronPython. I still don't know how to set UI Automation handler with COM interface from standard CPython.
EDIT (2019, January): new module win32hooks was implemented in pywinauto a while ago. Example of usage is here: examples/hook_and_listen.py.