The Action Editor is used to manipulate the statements performed by an action. You can have more than one Action Editor window open at the same time.
Every action editor window displays an icon on the window's header to the left of the action name. Right clicking on the icon will display a menu containing each path element in the Action Manager to the displayed action. Clicking on a menu item will open the Action Manager and will position to the clicked component.
The action editor window is divided into four panels:
- Upper Left Panel -- Statement Selection
- This panel, divided into two panels, contains a list of action statement categories and action statements within the currently selected category. This panel is used to insert statements into the statement list.
- Upper Right Panel -- The Statement List
- This panel contains the statements in the action. You can reorder items by drag and drop.
- Lower Right Panel -- Statement Settings
- This panel describes the settings associated with the action statement which is currently selected in the statement list.
- Lower Left Panel -- Statement Description
- This panel describes the statement selected in the Statement Selection panel. The 🌐 button will show the content in a browser. The ? button will display this help.
To add a new statement to the end of the action, double click on a function in the displayed Functions list. To place a statement in a particular location, drag the function into the upper right panel where you want it to appear.
You can add statements to a favourites list. To add or remove a function from the favourites list, right click on a statement in the Functions column and an appropriate menu item will be displayed. Note that the favourites list is shared by all Action Editor windows.
You can search for text, fields, named variables and variables via Edit>Find. Additional help can be found here. You can search for a particular statement from the context menu in the Functions column. There are Find Next, Find Previous and Find All menu items.
Most changes made to the displayed action can be undone.
To save an action use the File>Save or File>Save As menu items.
The following items may be available on the statement list context menu:
- Add Statement
- This submenu displays the favourite statements list. A favourite statement is inserted after the clicked location.
- Run Action
- Run the action if there are no unsaved changes.
- Save Changes and Run Action
- Commit any unsaved changes and run the action.
- Delete Statement
- Deletes the selected statements. Note that the Delete key will also remove statements.
- Duplicate
- The selected statements will be duplicated and inserted after the last selected statement.
- Enable / Disable Statements
- Enable
- Disable
- Toggle Enable/Disable
- Function statements can be disabled. When a statement is disabled it will not be executed when the action is run. Disabled functions are displayed starting with a # character and are dimmed. Disabled functions must be well formed and can be edited as if not disabled. Thes statements operate on the current selection.
- Mark / Unmark as Debug Statement
- Mark as Debug
- Unmark as Debug
- Toggle Debug Mark/Unmark
- Debug statements are easy to identify as they are displayed with red text and can be searched for and selected from the Find panel making them easy to delete. Often times you might insert action statements other than Debug for debugging purposes. These menu items allow you to specify that the selected statements are to be treated as if they are debug statements. When marked, these statements will display with red text and will be selected when searching for Debug statements in the Find panel.
- Enable / Disable Debug Statements
- Enable Debug
- Disable Debug
- Toggle Debug Enable/Disable
- Performs the selected function on all Debug statements and statements which have been marked as being debug statements.
- Cut, Copy, Paste
- Statements can be cut, copied and pasted in the curren Action Editor window or to any other open Action Editor window. Note you can also drag statements between Action Editor windows.
- Show Statement Help
- Display the help for the first selected statement. You can also do a double click on a statement to display its help. Help on action functions can also be found on the Help menu's Quick Reference submenu or here
- Validate for Context
- Use these submenus to verify that all statements in the action are valid for a specified execution context. Note that disabled statements are ignored.
- Action Usage
- The Action Usage menu lists all referenced actions, separate files and inline. It shows if any referenced actions are missing. Clicking on an action name will open or show the action.
- Action Text to Clipboard>Entire Action
- The action's text as displayed in the statement list is copied to the clipboard. Note if you are sending us the action for support, please do an Export from the Action Manager as opposed to sending us the text.
- Action Text to Clipboard>Selected Statements
- The text of selected statements is copied to the clipboard.
- Action Text to Clipboard>Line Numbers
- When checked, the copped lines will be prefixed with line numbers. The line numbers always start with 1.
- Action Text to Clipboard>Escaped for HTML
- When checked, the copied text will be enclosed in a <pre> </pre> construct and will have characters escaped if required.
- Resource Documentation
- Newer actions downloaded from the resources web page can have the resources documentation displayed via this item.
- Action Description...
- You can display a popup window which contains an action's description via this item. An action's description is the first non empty content in a Comment, Force Grouped, Tooltip or Version statement. A search for a description is terminated at the first enabled statement which is not one of the preceding statements or an Empty Line or Constrain Execution to a Single File statement.
Hitting the space bar has the same effect as selecting the menu item with the following exception. If a single statement is selected and it is a Comment, Force Grouped, Start, Tooltip or Version statement and has a non empty description, the description will be displayed in the popup window.
- Display Named Variable Usage
- The named variable usage in all open actions will be displayed in the Log Viewer.
Note: Most text fields in the Statements Settings panel have context menu items to facilitate the insertion of Escape Sequences. Typically, menu items will insert the unescaped value if the Shift key is down when an item is selected. For example selecting the Insert Yate Field>Album item will insert \[Album] when Shift is not down, or Album when it is.
