S.F. Eley #9
Mon Apr 15 21:34:13 1991
11The Making of Mind-Staggering Macros
7(by Stephen F. Eley, Esq.)

52Step 1.
  Come up with a cool handle.  If you don't have a cool handle, find someone 

to suggest one for you.  If you don't have someone to suggest one for you, 

find a social life and come back to BBS'ing when you can handle it.

2Step 2.
  If you can think of ANY nifty gimmicks, animation tricks, or graphics you'd 

like to include in your macro, you MIGHT want to think of them FIRST, which 

will save you countless hours of playing around.  (Then again, if you don't 

want countless hours of playing around..  Why are you BBS'ing?)

2Step 3.
  This step is the countless hours of playing around.  Before you actually 

save your macro, you might want to test various ideas first in the message 

base.  The most harmless way to do this is to e-mail yourself..   Which has 

added benefits in that if you log off before you save it and forget what it 

looks like, it will jump back out at you next time you log on.
   Play around with the commands for awhile, and see what it looks like..  

Also make sure that you REMEMBER 5(or write down) 5EVERY KEYSTROKE0, because you 

will have to re-type it key-for-key in the next step.
  (The actual gimmicks I shall get to in the next section, right now I'm just 

explaining the macro procedure.  Those who already know how 1WWIV 0works will 

have skipped past this thing already..  Or fallen asleep.)

2Step 4.
  Here is where you actually enter AND SAVE your macro.  Log onto the board
and, at the main prompt, hit "D" for D:efaults.  Choose the option to 

Update Macros, or whatever your thing calls it.  Decide which CTRL- key you 

want to define, select it, and 5RE-TYPE 0your beautiful creation key-for-key.
It will look like a string of garbage because the commands and returns will 

become control characters, but if you get the keystrokes right it should look 

fine in real life.   Hit CTRL-Z when you're finished copying.
2Example:
  If you wanted to create a macro that looked like this:
    1Ý2°²6³3±°54Billy-Bob3°±6³2²°1Þ
it would look in the D:efaults macro section like this:
"^P1Ý^P2°²^P6³^P3±°^P4Billy-Bob^P3°±^P6³^P2²°^P1Þ^M^Z"

  That's assuming there's a carriage return at the end, and no spaces or tabs
at the beginning.   You don't actually have to TYPE all the 1^P0's and 1^N0's and 

things, just hit the CTRL-P or CTRL-N and the magic macro maker will translate 

it for you.

7ALTERNATIVE:
   0What many people will do is, instead of using the built-in WWIV macros and 

having to type it in separately on each board, install the macros on their 

friendly neighborhood Comm program INSTEAD.  If your macro is sitting in 

Telix, you are free to use it ALL the time, EVERYWHERE, with the touch of an 

F-key.   For MOST comm programs, the typing-in procedure is the same (though 

you might have to substitute ^ for each CTRL, and ^M for a carriage return.)


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