Note for everyone trying to get this to work: the key word is "set" (i.e., "configured"). To set the character icon attributes from (or based on) those of another character icon:
Choose the character icon of a macro with the settings you want (or want to start with)
If the Icon Chooser is open close it
Open the icon chooser
The Character Pane of the Icon Chooser will now have the attributes of the selected icon.
Select the icon well of the target macro
Nothing happens! (This is what I think is missing from all the descriptions about setting or copying the characteristics of one icon from another.)
Change any of the attributes in the Icon Chooser:
one of three shapes
the character
background color
foreground color
size
vertical position
horizontal position
The selected icon gets all the old attributes plus the one you just changed.
When you select the icon of a macro that already has a character icon nothing will change in the Character Pane of the Icon Chooser if it is open. To edit the icon you must first close then reopen the Icon Chooser.
@peternlewis, if you could update the KM Wiki that would be very helpful to many. It would be great to explicitly list the steps to assign icons, starting with the Icon Chooser, and with an existing Macro icon.
Agreed. If I assign an icon from the Icon Chooser, and then copy/paste that icon from the macro to another macro, it should be exactly the same icon.
Only by writing my own image well control. It is doable, "it is just code". But it takes time and it's hard to justify the time over everything else on the list of things to do.
When you have a Macro or Macro Group icon well selected, and you make any change in the Icon Chooser, or if you click the icon in the Icon Chooser, then the icon for the Macro/Macro Group will be set.
To load the Icon Chooser from an existing Macro or Macro Group, select the icon well of the Macro/Macro Group and then open the Icon Chooser (close it first if necessary).
If not icon well is selected when you open the Icon Chooser then it will retain the settings that were last used.
Note that icons configured from the Icon Chooser will be very small in storage size in your macros. Icons set any other way (including copy & paste from another icon) will be much larger.
To transfer an Icon Chooser created icon from one macro to another, use this process:
Close the Icon Chooser if it is open.
Select the source icon well.
Open the Icon Chooser - it will take on the characteristics of the source icon.
Since this has only a visual effect, I would make it a low priority.
Now that we know how to assign the same icon to multiple macros, I see this as only a minor annoyance, which does NOT occur that often.
This cleared up a serious mystery for me, which was the source of many of my comments in this thread and in email to Peter. Sometimes starting off the the newly opened Character Icon Chooser with the currently selected icon worked, sometimes it didn't, and I couldn't figure out what was going on. It turns out that it didn't work when I had selected an icon that had been copied and pasted from another macroâs icon.
I think the explanation at the bottom of manual:Icon Chooser [Keyboard Maestro Wiki] needs to emphasize that you can't edit an icon that was copied and pasted from another macro. The entry does explain that copy and paste produces a march larger image, but it does not explicitly make the parallel point that a copy and pasted icon can not be edited. I think it should say something like âA character icon copied from one macro and pasted into the icon well of another is pasted as a image, not a character icon, and the Character Icon Chooser will not be able to use it.â
With that settled, I would strongly argue (and Tomâs comment supports this) that pasting a character icon copied from another should paste as a character icon, not an image. Seems like much more logical behavior â at least it is the behavior some of us assumed â and a trivial iimplementation change.
Another point: this suggestion could be dismissed on the grounds that I could always go back to the original icon and go through the proper procedure, but I am currently looking at a macro group where 12 of the macros have the same icon. To find the original, I have to select each macro, select its icon, close the Icon Chooser, and reopen it to see if I am seeing the character icon.
Yeah, itâs what I have been doing, but still think pasting-as-character-icon is a worthwhile idea. Actually, you donât have to export them: you can just edit ~/Library/Application Support/Keyboard Maestro/Keyboard Maestro Macros.plist with something that understands plists, such as Atom, BBEdit, TextWrangler, or Xcode.
Yes, of course. My post was about quickly identifying the macro with the original icon out of a bunch of 20 macros or so. (As an alternative to the method from your post (opening/closing icon chooser for each macro).)
you can just edit ~/Library/Application Support/Keyboard Maestro/Keyboard Maestro Macros.plist
That file holds all macros. So, when looking for a certain char, I find it more convenient to export only the macros in question. (The exported .kmmacros file is also a simple XML file, just like the plist file.)
Bwahahaha. If I had a dollar for every time a "trivial implementation" was suggested for something that would take days of work, well, I'd vacation in nicer places put it that way
The Image Well is a system control, it copies and pasted images. It doesn't support double clicking. It does not know about Keyboard Maestroâs character images, etc. So to make these behaviours I would have to re-implement the Image Well or try to sub-class it and make these things work. This is far from "trivial". If it was trivial, I would have implemented it this way in the first place.
So it may happen at some point, or it may remain on the wrong side of the cost/benefit equation while I work on other things.
Yeah, I was approaching this backwards. I was thinking from the point of view of the .plist file, where all you would have to do is paste the character image data from the original macro into the XML of the new macro. Wasn't thinking about how much of the system image well mechanics you might be using.
LOL. Been there. I'm currently working on something that's relatively trivial, and the only thing left is to prompt the user. However, there's multiple scenarios, so I have to come up with a different prompt for each scenario, and, well, days and days go by and I still don't have it down.
When it's finally done, you would look at it and say "Meh, that looks easy". Yeah, right.
Dan, given all the XML hacking youâve done on KM macros, couldnât you cook something up that would copy the character icon data from one macro and past it to another? Nothing to do with the icon well. Interface would be a bit awkward, something like: select a macro, do Copy Macroâs Character Icon, select another macro, do Paste Character Icon. Or select a macro, select another macro, and do Copy Previous Macroâs Character Icon to This Macro. (The Replace macro in my Finder Icon Copy and Paste works like that.)
) it would be easier like this: