On 19 Nov 2007, at 20:29, Richard Blumberg wrote:
I'm trying to build a complicated macro to add a footnote to text selected in a document. There are two values that I need to maintain while the macro runs, so that those values can be inserted into the proper places within the links that the macro creates. The values are CURRENT_FN_NUMBER, a unique id I create with the shell date command; and CURRENT_FN_TITLE, which is the value of $TM_SELECTED_TEXT when the macro launches.
I'd like to us those values to insert code into the document, e.g.
At the beginning of the current paragraph:
Replace selected text with: #fn{$CURRENT_FN_NUMBER} $CURRENT_FN_TITLE
At bottom of document, just before "<!--<next footnote -->": #{CURRENT_FN_NUMBER} $CURRENT_FN_TITLE
There's more to it than that, but you get the idea. The macro does a lot of jumping around within the document, setting and removing bookmarks as it goes.
I've set CURRENT_FN_NUMBER and CURRENT_FN_TITLE as project environmental variables, but I can't figure out how to set values for those variables when the macro executes.
Hmm, I don't see way to do this via macros. Did you think about to write a (shell/perl/ruby/etc) command for that problem? If there are reasons to use macros, well I believe TMTOOLS could do that. With TMTOOLS you can execute dynamic generated macros using a bash shell. But as I mentioned in an earlier mail, TMTOOLS should ONLY be used for 'private scripting'.
Cheers, --Hans