zip files: macros.ZIP | macsys.zip

macsys examples

From: Iain Tuddenham 

Generally for switching between apps I use a macro I wrote for MacSys
(which I find indispensable): with it, I hit C-A (easy to type one-handed)
plus a one-letter shortcut for whichever app I want to go to.  It has the
advantage that it will start the app if not already started, rather than
take you to an icon and wait for you to press Enter.  The shortcut keys
each map to an app/file combination, easily maintainable via a Data file.

Here are other things I use MacSys for ("short string" means up to 255
chars or first hard linend) - all invokable from anywhere with a single key
press:
- C-S-On/Off to turn the Psion link on/off;
- C-S-P to turn the password on and the Psion off;
- C-S-Q to turn all sound off - handy for meetings!;
- to implement a task manager, listing all tasks on the screen to be
stopped or switched to;
- to encyrpt short strings within any app, so I can keep passwords & PINs
with relevant Data records or Jotter entries;
- to capitalise short strings or convert them to upper or lower case;
- to make a To-do Aganda entry for an anniversary, dated four days before
the anniversary (to remind me to post a card for a birthday!);
- C-S-Psion-P to print the screen to my Canon BJ-200;
- to quickly set sensible margins in Print setup in any app;
- to copy a word to Spell & check its spelling;
- single key press to add an Agenda To-do entry;
- to make C-Psion-B bring in places that bring normally doesn't work (e.g.
in dialog boxes);
- to momentarily highlight a few characters either side of the text cursor,
so I can find it!;
- to enter today's date in the format W17/9/97;
- to implement various Emacs editing key presses - though I don't use most,
since once one has learnt the Psion equivalents, they execute quicker;
- to copy the selected short string to Data to look it up - handy for
finding phone numbers of a person named in an Agenda entry;
- to copy an address to a Word template ready to print an envelope;
- to display the ASCII code of the selected character;
- to stop Comms and start Nfsc, so I can use a Comms script to log on to my
account, then hit a hotkey and have VT220 emulation from then on;
- various ad hoc macros to do things such as change an Agenda To-do entry's
priority to 1 and make it bold, or to automate ad hoc editing of text.

Phew - didn't realise when I started typing how much there was!

Well worth =A330, I'd say.  But in fact, MacSys is free!
http://www.livetext.com/macsys/  The overhead is 34K disk space plus 23K to
run.  The macros themselves generally take much less than 1K of disk space,
and use memory only when actually running - much better than separate apps
to implement task managers, etc.

kbdmod examples

For some reason, I mapped System to Psion-2, and recovered # by mapping it to C-S-2. I think it was because C-System takes you to the RunImg icon in System, rather than to whichever icon you were on.

I use my 3c a lot to access my UNIX account, so I find it very handy to have back tick and pipe on hand - I've mapped them to C-S-* & C-S-/.

As you probably know, can be used to produce accented letters, with the accent looking similar to a symbol on the number key - so C-2 produces an umlaut, C-3 a grave accent. However, 4 & 5 are the wrong way round, producing an acute accent and a tilde respectively. Initially, I re-mapped these to be the right way round. This had the disadvantage of interfering with the trick of holding the Control key down whilst typing the three-digit decimal code of a character to enter it, so I ended up swapping them back.

I modified the second layout to make a numeric keypad, with 456 & 123 in place of uio & jkl (the decimal point then nicely falls in the same place as my PC & Sun keyboards).