Copy between macros

A little bit of trivia,
⌘X -- cut uses X as it was originally eXcise long long ago.
Similarly moVe for paste.

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Thanks for all the info! Very helpful :slight_smile:

Curious. I've never heard of that, and there is no mention of it here:
Cut, copy, and paste - Wikipedia

My guess is that the shortcut keys (X C V) were largely chosen for their ease of typing/reach, since all three are grouped at the bottom left of the keyboard, which makes it easy to reach in combination with the CMD (or CNTL) key.

Just my 2¢.

Long ago when I was first learning computers I was taught (as a mnemonic) to remember V as Velcro (Paste).

I would prefer recommending we have one more macro editing pane on KM UI. We need this not only because we need to copy paste between each other, but also we learn things from other macro.

I frequently open a 2nd Editor Window. This helps when copying and pasting actions.

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Hi Steve. Do you mean we already have this feature? I cannot figure out how to open 2nd editor window.

I hope there is something like this in Context Menu. When you right-button-click macro in Macro List, you can choose Open in 2nd Editor Pane.

Under the File menu.
File > New Editor Window or keyboard shortcut ⌃ ⌘ N

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Many thanks. Cannot imagine this is in File menu :sweat_smile:

But if we have more than one editing pane, we can use drag-and-drop to do a lot of copy-paste work. That would be cool.

And I just tried with 2nd Editor Window.
If you are editing a big KM macro which is including more than 100 actions, You will find it's difficult to do editing works in KM UI. Looks like the UI cannot refresh in time. Looks like you open a long webpage in Browser on a very slow computer.
If you are editing KM on Macbook Pro, it's OK. But if you do this on Macbook air, it's not smooth.
I really have build up some very very long macro. I fight with this UI refreshing issue for long time.
And I just found, this issue was magnified exaggeratively when you open second editor window. Especially when you open a same big body macro in second editor window.
You type ABCD in macro note. You will see the ABCD show up one by one with long time interval. Close the second editor window, you will see a big improvement.
I heard of that when you scroll up and down in internet browser, the system will only render the part you are seeing. I m not a coder So I dont know the internal principle.
But I think the algorithm of KM UI Refresh can be optimized. Especially for editing big-body-macro.@peternlewis @Steve_E

Yes, Keyboard Maestro is not designed for very long macros, and it definitely gets slow if you have long macros. And having a second window open means every change requires the entire macro in the second window to be refreshed, which will make if very slow for long macros. Allowing multiple editor windows was shoe-horned in to the design and so is not as efficient as it might be if it was designed that way from the start.

While I would like it to be better, I would not be holding my breath waiting for it.

The quickest solution would be not to have very long macros - break your macros up in to sub-macros using either Execute a Macro action or Execute a Subroutine action.

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Apart from the very sound advice given to you by @peternlewis there may also be another thing you can try to improve the situation.

I too was having performance issues and I found a setting in KM version 10 that helped enormously. Have a look at this post of mine and try changing the Evaluate Condition Results setting. I hope it will make a difference for you as it did for me!

I already use Execute a Macro a lot in my Macro. Using software with KM can push the software to the limit. And we also push KM to the limit at the same time. It is determined by its own nature. I hope we can use it without compromise. If we cannot go further due to UI issue, that would be a pity.

I ll try this. Thanks. // Unfortunately, I just checked. This option was already unchecked by default on my system. So I cannot use it to improve the UI performance.

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@peternlewis It would be super handy to be able to paste above a selected action by holding another modifier, as you can when adding a Favourite. Particularly useful when you want to paste something at the very start of a macro.

Off-topic, but while you're here:

I think the (great) new Press Button When Enabled action might have a small Timeout bug. Perhaps it's just me, but it doesn't seem to accept 0.x decimals when Seconds is selected.

This is already here.

Actions>Paste Above

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:hushed: well slap me sideways...

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No timeouts accept decimals. You can select Hundredths of a second.

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I'm really not on form this week. :woozy_face:

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