Feature request: Auto-expand all input fields

Questions & Suggestions
1

This came up in this thread about a regex issue, which wasn't really a regex issue at all, but an input error: The user wanted a regex of \[.*$, but somehow entered that four times, once per line, in the regex field. But in the Keyboard Maestro editor, there's no way to tell that there's a problem:

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It looks fine. The only way we figured out there was an issue was by having the user upload the macro. I installed the macro, selected all the text (Cmd-A) in the input box, copied it, then pasted it into TextEdit, where I saw the problem.

Edit: It also came up in this thread about Prompt With List, where the problem was (once again) hidden data in the input field.

To prevent these issues, I think Keyboard Maestro should auto-expand any text field that contains a newline character. This issues crops up a lot, especially if you're dealing with copy-and-paste text, where an extra line break, or line break and more characters, might sneak in without being noticed.

But if these fields expanded when there was a line break in the source, the problems would be easily spotted and fixed. What about it, @peternlewis? :slight_smile:

-rob.

6 Likes
2

Big ups on that. I love how KM does this with some of the calculation fields.

3

These are a different kind of field, so they don't expand, or have any ability to expand. It's been a long standing issue across macOS that you can get return characters into them and then have no idea that they are there.

It's not practical to make them all expand I'm afraid.

4

Dang it, I was afraid of that :(. If you can't expand them, is there any way you could add an indicator that shows there's more there than what's visible?

-rob.

5

Maybe.

2 Likes