Some suggested enhancements for the KM Editor

Questions & Suggestions
1

Some suggested enhancements for the KM Editor

1: Make it clearer if a macro group is enabled e.g. with a green tick or a red cross. emojii, I find it hard to see the difference with different shades of grey.

2: At the top of the window, display BOTH the macro group AND the macro name plus enabled/not enabled.

At the moment only the macro name is displayed.

3: Extra toggle button to toggle between Easy and Advanced modes, so newbies are not overwhelmed.

4: Extra toggle button to show/hide actions

5: Extra toggle button to hide/show disabled macro groups

6: Extra toggle button to hide/show smart groups

7: Extra toggle button to apply a KM filter on displayed macro group names eg. group::sparkle: only

8: Extra toggle button to hide/show say last 20 ACTIVE EDIT macro groups i.e. the ones you are editing

9: When I am travelling,`I am short of display space on a single screen, so
A: Remove minimize size restrictions
B: Extra toggle button to hide/show macro group column. <<Really Important !!
C:Apply a filter on displayed macro group names eg. group::sparkle:

10: If a field is not fully displayed e.g. Add log message, then an Expansion icon/button to expand it fully. (But NOT the cog wheel, please). <<Really important

Second editor screen management

11: If you open a second editor window, would be nice to have “primary/secondary” icons so you know which window you are editing it

12: Ability to open secondary window in REFERENCE mode i.e. you can’t change anything by mistake

1 Like
2

Re point 1: I understand the wish to make enabled and disabled items more easily distinguishable, but personally I would find colourful emojis to be visual clutter (especially since most of my macro groups are already marked with a green tick currently, in order to distinguish them imported groups and groups that I am reworking! :laughing:).

With respect to suggestions about showing/hiding groups, I would be concerned that this would cause confusion, especially for beginners, and that it would be an added variable when assistance is asked for.

Start/stop editing macros can be toggled for individual windows, but of course that does change how the macros are shown.

3

I'm unlikely to add additional visual indications of this.

This is possible I suppose. I'm not convinced.

I don't know what you would want in the “Easy” mode, and I'm loath to add additional modes. I mostly regret adding the Edit/Non-Edit mode as it is.

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Command-F, en: (or en:0) return

This is unlikely to happen.

Hiding things is already problematic, and I already have to implement extra things disabled markers in the list when groups or macros are unshown, and I still get desperate emails about lost macros/groups.

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Size restrictions are largely driven by the ability to show the actions without them being hopelessly mangled. Enhancing the editor to freely flow actions would be a Herculean task.

That would be nice, but it's challenging to do and has a lot of additional complications.

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There is no such thing as a primary and secondary editor window.

That is unlikely.

4

Just in case any reader missed it (and there is a history of it being overlooked, even by the most adept users!), the Keyboard Maestro Editor has full support for standard Mac undo and redo.

I have often thought that, when the Editor has more than one edit window open, it would be useful to have independent undo/redo for each window… but of course, that would require locking edits of any one macro to one window… and I'm sure multiple undo histories would be a horrible can of worms for the developer, too!