Re: Inserting specific text with an Editor Action or Command

Hi Vernon,

Thanks for your reply.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by key mapping - there seems to be a
bunch of places in RDi where you can define stuff related to keys..

I think last time I looked at User Key Actions ( which is where you can
define key shortcuts to call RDi actions ) - I have already set some of
those up for "splitAndShift" and "pasteOverlay".

But I think with regard to my current requirement I couldn't see how that
would work as IIRC the actions don't allow you to pass parameters, the
"paste" action for example just pastes from the clipboard, you can't
provide a string as a parameter. I did have an attempt at creating my own
er, I think it was a user action, but I didn't manage to get it to work, I
think I found much of the literature on the subject to be a bit confusing
and potentially out of date.

That said, I have seen posts in this forum, possibly around the subject of
converting source to free-format, where there were links to working
examples. Maybe I need to dig those out if I can and use them as a start -
I have done a small amount of java programming, so I guess I could muddle
through it.

I understand what you are saying with regard to the rectangular selection
thing but I guess I'd view that as about a similar amount of work to
copying and pasting the text I require from elsewhere in the open file, but
I'd really just like to hit a keystroke like I do it SEU where you can
assign processing against F7 and F8 and the exit program passes you the
screen location to work with.

I might have a perusal at iSphere, but I might run up against limitations
of installing 3rd party software on my clients machines... Sadly we have to
work using Citrix Clients which isn't the most wonderful environment.

Thanks for your info though, something more to look at.
best regards
Craig

On 12 August 2016 at 09:23, Vernon Hamberg <vhamberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Craig

Have you looked at key mapping? You should be able to set up a key
combination that will put any character or characters where you are.

Extra stuff is created using Java, so far as I know - there's a
development kit within RDi, to help with this kind of thing. David Gibbs
who runs these lists has done some of this.

You could take a look at iSphere, a nice set of utilities for RDi - maybe
Thomas Raddatz would be interested in making some kind of utility for you.

If you need to fill a block with the same character you can position your
cursor, press Alt-R, go to the end of your rectangle, press Aot-R again -
then right-click and press L press E then type your fill character or
string - this could likely be programmed using the Java stuff (which I've
never done!)

HTH
Vern

On 8/12/2016 1:26 AM, Craig Richards wrote:

Hi All,

In my pre-RDi days, I wrote an SEU exit program that allowed me to perform
things like:

- Insert a comment with a horizontal line across the full source
width (
as an aid to make it easier to see subprocedure / subroutine
boundaries
- Insert comment metadata ( either a double slash (//) or a carefully

positioned asterisk (*) followed by a hex control character ( usually
x'20'
) to make the comment highlighted.

Although I do perform most of my development using RDi these days - I
still
keep with the habit of inserting horizontal line separators and inserting
a
hex character at the beginning of comment text to help it stand out when
view via SEU which doesn't auto-colour comments.

I have never really found an easy way to do this in RDi, mostly I scroll
about and select and copy what I need from another place in the source ( I
usually have one, even the simplest programs I write usually start life as
a copy of another program )

I did at one point create some snippets with bits of text in I could
insert
but I think they only worked on CALC lines and if you tried to insert
partway along a new line, the text would insert at the beginning of the
line, not where the cursor/carat was positioned ( which of course I
understand, the line doesn't automatically get blank filled up to the
insertion point )

I think I decided that there wasn't an existing Action or Command that I
could use for this purpose and I didn't get very far on my only attempt at
trying to write my own.

Does anyone have an easy way of doing this?

In it's simplest form I guess I'd like to be able to get a predefined
character inserted at the current carat position by pressing a shortcut
key.

Does anyone have a way of doing this or something similar they could point
me at?

thanks kindly,
Craig

--
This is the Rational Developer for IBM i / Websphere Development Studio
Client for System i & iSeries (WDSCI-L) mailing list
To post a message email: WDSCI-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change list options,
visit: http://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/wdsci-l
or email: WDSCI-L-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives
at http://archive.midrange.com/wdsci-l.