[Manifold-l] macro-makers / scripters

Sat Oct 21 00:21:25 CDT 2006

Sure, James - what you're describing is a keystroke recorder. Incidentally,
the banks don't like them! (I'm being dishonest - slightly different
technology, since one's overt and the other's being rather naughty). 

You're right - I shouldn't be lazy and dismiss these things. 

But since it's just a keystroke recorder, there needs to be a very clear
warning that the workflow has to be exactly fitted to the project's
components and disposition. So, OK for doing work as you describe: once on a
single layer, then repeating the macro 999 times knowing that repeating the
keystroke sequence on the next 999 layers is going to be OK. But otherwise -
dangerous. 

And, it doesn't teach anyone anything about scripting - which was what I was
more focused on. 

Sorry to appear rude (well, not as apparently rude as Dimitri Rotow,
anyway).

IL Thomas
GeoSciSoft  - Perth, Australia

  _____  

From: JBurn_GIS [mailto:jburn_gis at cogeco.ca] 
Sent: Saturday, October 21, 2006 11:07 AM
To: geoscisoft at iinet.net.au; manifold-l at lists.directionsmag.com
Subject: Re: [Manifold-l] macro-makers / scripters

Certainly I agree with you, and no, these two programs have no direct access
to Manifold's features, nore was it claimed.  However, I would hardly say
that this discounts their usefulness, and I certainly wouldn't say that
installing them is a waste of time, especially when the install is <10mb and
getting up and running is pretty quick and easy.  Why imagine - just do a
search and check out their sites to see if would be useful to you.

>From a very simple standpoint (I'm a simple man after all;-), they allow the
various events and functions (transforms for example), mouse clicks, click
locations (therefore "buttons" clicked), keyboard clicks etc. to be captured
and recorded.  These in turn can be strung together and include user input.
To push it a bit further, they can create independant floating menu bars.  

A simple example.  One of our co-op students (he's the one who introduced me
to these) needed to import multiple DWG's into one Manifold project.  Each
DWG had numerous layers.  So what?  Here's the kicker - groups of these
layers (say all the ones dealing w/ water) needed to be (A) consolidated
into one Manifold drawing and (B) the entities in that initial layer needed
to be "tagged" in the table with their initial AutoCAD drawing and layer
name for reference.

The manual method (aka - for non-programmers like me) would probably be to
open a drawing, ctrl+A, ctrl+C, select the new drawing, ctrl+V, open the
table, double click in a selected field, enter the name of the drawing,
enter the name of the layer, "enter" to fill the rest of selected records,
clear the selection, and delete the initial drawing as it is no longer
needed, and then move to the next.  This would have to be done for every
layer from every drawing, and we were initially looking at a few hundred
layers at least.  Instead, he made a nice "macro" (used QuickMacros app.)
that did all of that, set it to "run" and went for lunch;-)  As I mentioned,
AutoIT can turn their macro scripts into a self contained .exe (AutoIT not
required to run them), which can then be put into a add-in very easily ...

So while the programs do not have access to the "backend" of how the
application works and functions and I certainly am not trying to say that
they are the end all and be all ... one could say that they have "frontend"
access through the user telling the program what to do and where and how on
the screen.  And while I agree that this isn't enough for some - although I
know of a few "serious coders" who do make use of these types of
applications - we have found that they certianly do have a place and are
more then enough for a lot of tedious work or work that needs to be done
multiple times.

So by all means, improve the scripting environment of Manifold, make it
easier for non-coders like me to use, give me more tools and less typing ...
but until then, I'm happy and satisfied with my little free app.

Cheers.

---------------
James Burn BSc, GIS(pg), AScT

----- Original Message ----- 

From: SCISOFT <mailto:geoscisoft at iinet.net.au>  

To: manifold-l at lists.directionsmag.com 

Sent: Friday, October 20, 2006 7:31 PM

Subject: [Manifold-l] macro-makers / scripters

Re AutoIT and QuickMacros: I just cannot imagine that such a product would
have any "access" to the Manifold scripting engine. Tell me if I'm wrong -
but I think that even installing these and trying would be a waste of time! 

As has been indicated many times before, a number of people believe that
Manifold needs richer events. Just having some variation of a "macro
recorder" isn't enough for many serious coders. A few people whose opinions
/ comments I respect have made a reasonable case for this, here and on the
Manifold Community website. 

But having script echoing would be good. In contrast to 1 or 2 recent
comments, I would predict a very big impact on those who are now very
tentative about beginning any Manifold scripting (and the common Manifold
answer to any question is "write a script"), by the implementation of an
"echoing" function. 

That's certainly why the MapBasic (MB) scripting language in MapInfo
Professional has taken off, over many years - in the "immediate window",
users can see the simple statements that have been executed. MB is not so
object based, so my guess would be that implementing something equivalent in
Manifold might be a little tricky. What is very good about MB is that it has
a limited but very useful set of events that allow simple icon-based
user-defined tools to be easily created (to sit on a button toolbar). What
is very bad about MB is that it has an extremely awkward way of defining
forms or dialog boxes (no visual designer). Despite all of that, the user
fraternity of MapInfo has created a huge array of user tools, for various
specialist purposes. 

Some of these tools (which are just encapsulated or modularized scripts, put
into a compiled package - a MBX file that the GIS itself can run - and
sometimes associated with a button on a user a toolbar, or a menu) are very
simple, others are elaborate and part of very sophisticated work flows and
have been supplemented by other extensions. 

Some of that is possible within the Manifold Add-Ins model. 

As we all know, Manifold provides a lot more, for free, than MapInfo does.
MB is a significant extra cost (more than the total cost of a mid-range
Manifold license). 

Manifold Net Ltd may regard MapInfo as an insignificant player (or is it
that some people have too much ESRI focus?) in their market segment, but
there are features of MI that I would like to see adopted within Manifold.
Over the past 2 or 3 years I have occasionally espoused these, but I'm a
lone voice I think. 

IL Thomas
GeoSciSoft  - Perth, Australia

  _____  

From: manifold-l-bounces at lists.directionsmag.com
[mailto:manifold-l-bounces at lists.directionsmag.com] On Behalf Of Linus F
Upson III
Sent: Saturday, October 21, 2006 3:54 AM
To: JBurn_GIS; Simon Linder; Dimitri Rotow;
manifold-l at lists.directionsmag.com
Subject: Re: [Manifold-l] Manifold reference clients

I'll try AutoIT but I really think my scripter would be based on Manifold
natives (or scripts) which operates similar to ERDAS Imagine's query machine
but has a built-in "preview" capability (like PhotoShop's) for both tabular
and spatial 'tentative results,'  which in turn are actively updated as the
script is assembled and tested.  

----- Original Message ----- 

From: JBurn_GIS <mailto:jburn_gis at cogeco.ca>  

To: Linus F Upson III <mailto:lupson at cox.net>  ; Simon
<mailto:slinder at widernetworks.com>  Linder ; Dimitri
<mailto:dar at manifold.net>  Rotow ; manifold-l at lists.directionsmag.com 

Sent: Friday, 20 October, 2006 12:40 AM

Subject: Re: [Manifold-l] Manifold reference clients

While I'm not sure I agree w/ Simon's other points - we have high school
co-op students with no former GIS training figureing those things out within
a day or so; I agree that a macro maker/editor would be grand.  I think I
suggested it to sales in the form of a new kind of component.  However, in
the meantime I would suggest you look at either AutoIT (free) or QuickMacros
(I think its ~$30).  Both are program independent "macro makers".  AutoIT
will even make them into a nice executable ... which could be added to
Manifold as an add-in;-)

Cheers.

---------------
James Burn BSc, GIS(pg), AScT

----- Original Message ----- 

From: Linus F Upson III <mailto:lupson at cox.net>  

To: Simon <mailto:slinder at widernetworks.com>  Linder ; Dimitri
<mailto:dar at manifold.net>  Rotow ; manifold-l at lists.directionsmag.com 

Sent: Friday, October 20, 2006 12:06 AM

Subject: Re: [Manifold-l] Manifold reference clients

    Amen.  The theme of the next version of Manifold should be "solutions" 
and a click & move scripter + library based on existing functions.  But then

these have been suggested before.  Linus

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Simon Linder" <pslinder at earthlink.net>
To: "Dimitri Rotow" <dar at manifold.net>; <manifold-l at lists.directionsmag.com>
Sent: Thursday, 19 October, 2006 11:09 AM
Subject: RE: [Manifold-l] Manifold reference clients

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