What are the best keyboard macros for programming in windows? - keyboard

I like putting shortcuts of the form "g - google.lnk" in my start menu so google is two keystrokes away. Win, g.
My eight or so most frequent applications go there.
I also make links to my solution files I am always opening "x - Popular Project.lnk"
Are there any better ways to automate opening frequently used applications?

AutoHotkey is a reasonably good program for implementing windows key shortcuts. You might instead define WIN + G to be "open browser to google" which gives you a better response time (don't have to wait for start menu to popup, etc)
There are macro programs that change the macros used based on the window that's in focus. I've never needed that much control, but you might want to look into that.
-Adam

Get a keyboard launcher program like Launchy

For shortcuts I use Launchy
For macros I use AutoHotKey
Others will suggest SlickRun for shortcuts also.

I use a lot the "intellisense" snippets in Visual Studio. You can include your own snippets and press double tab when they appear in the list. That's definitely a time saver.

I use QuickMacros and love it.
so much so, that I did some extensive training articles on it here.

The holy grail-
Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V
I kid, I kid! Try the veal!

Related

unwanted: APL keyboard overlay enabled?

I've been trying out APL. I'm running Windows 10 and I've installed Dyalog 18.0, and the APL Language and APL Backtick Symbols extentions for VS Code.
But even though I'm not running any of these programs, sometimes suddenly my keyboard is hyjacked! All my ctrl commands are replaced by APL symbols.
E.g. ctrl-Z (undo) becomes ⊂ and ctrl-A (select all) becomes ⍺. I have no idea why and how to disable this again. This makes it very hard to do my work!!!
I've been googling for this, but haven't found an answer so far. I've looked at the Windows keyboard settings, but it looks normal. The locale settings are also correct.
I'm now just de-installing everything, but that way I need to reinstall every time I want to try out APL.
Can somebody tell me what is happening and how to fix it? (And tell me who to complain to that this is a very hostile feature)
I am sorry that our Unicode IME is causing you confusion.
I do like using it, but there are some Windows settings which I set to make things easier.
Start button->Settings
In the "Find a setting" edit field, type Advanced keyboard settings
Click on the icon with that text on it
Under Switching input methods:
Tick the “Let me set a different input method for each app window”
Tick the "Use the desktop language bar when it's available". This option will show the orange D icon when our Dyalog Unicode IME is active.
On this same dialog, there is a Input language hot keys.
I find it convenient to select a hot key combination to activate our Unicode IME, and another one to go back to the default Windows keyboard layout.
Close this dialog with the X button in the top right.
If you have further problems or questions, you can always ask us at support#dyalog.com
By the way, we put links to advice pages about keyboards on our website under Resources->Fonts and Keyboards.
Regards,
Vince
When installing the standard Dyalog IME, there is a new keyboard input method on Windows. Have you checked WinKey+Space? This should cycle through available keyboard layouts and you should find your previous/default layout available there.
I personally agree that this is not a good way to handle keyboarding and causes many issues for newcomers to APL. Dyalog is aware and are looking into alternatives that can be comfortable for both new and existing users.
You can uninstall the standard IME without uninstalling the entire interpreter by running the Dyalog uninstaller (search "uninstall Dyalog" in your start menu) and selecting just the IME.
For now, I recommend the APL Wiki article on Typing Glyphs for some ideas for alternatives to the standard IME: https://aplwiki.com/wiki/Typing_glyphs#Windows
I personally use the abrudz keyboard with Alt Gr as the switching key.
I just wanted to add that your complaint has reached the people who need to be complained to. This is a difficult problem space, between changing technologies, multiple platforms, new or casual users of APL and the folks who use APL all the time and want to type APL symbols into e-mail messages, etc. It is most definitely time for an overhaul of the keyboard technologies that we use and this will be on the to do list for the next development cycle. Until then, I hope you manage to get by with the advice that has been offered so far!
Thanks for the shout,
Morten Kromberg, CTO, Dyalog

VS Code keyboard layout change

I am using Visual Studio Code with English keyboard layout switched in Windows when programming, but when I am using my computer for general use I use Slovak keyboard layout. Sometimes it can get ridiculous when I switch from one to another multiple times in one minute. Is there a setting (or a plugin) that could set the keyboard layout in VS Code to English while Windows layout is still set to Slovak?
I will summarize for you the solution to this, hope it is still helpful for you or any other looking for this answer:
you have to press Ctrl+Alt+P
then in the display that will appear at the top, write the language you want in case it does not appear
once this is done, VSC will ask you to restart.
once restarted is done it should be fine.
It is the way to do it without changing windows configuration as you will see in ther similar posts.
Hope it helps

What keyboard shortcut can i use without conflicts with modern browsers?

I'm developping a web application and i intend to use mouse and some keyboard shortcuts, and if possible, use modal keys (Ctrl / Shift / Alt).
I've noticed a lot a conflicts with modern browsers/OS. Here are some examples you may know:
Ctrl+S
Ctrl+F
Shift+R : refreshes the page on firefox
Alt+left click : moves a window on linux
Ctrl+J : opens the download tab in chrome
I can't find what shortcuts (with modal keys) i can use safely in my application. Is there a list somewhere of a rule to follow?
You could have a look at this, which is a rather exhaustive list of used shortcuts.
However your question has already been asked here and here and it seems there is no such list.
Try this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_keyboard_shortcuts
My suggestion would to throw something unique in the shortcut for example:
Say you needed to bookmark something quickly, chromes is ctrl+D, instead i would do ctrl+shift+m or ctrl+alt+m
Even still you might run into duplicate shortcuts, but going with something unique will give you the best results.
Hope this helps.

Text editor in Windows with real time update?

What's a good text editor in Windows that automatically updates the view whenever the opened file has been modified by another process? I need this to watch the output of my program.
If you like using a mouse, Notepad++ is great
If you're happier with the keyboard, for me, it has to be Emacs. Here's the download for Windows.
To use the feature in Emacs, add the following to your .emacs:
(global-auto-revert-mode t)
There are lots of people at work who like Textpad but I don't understand why, it doesn't even have column editing.
Notepad++ has this feature.
If you want to reload automatically, go to Settings / Preferences, then the MISC tab and uncheck Update silently under File Status Auto-detection.
What I use is snaketail. It can update in real time several files, even without the focus.
I would recommend Notepad2. It refresh the content automatically without focus switching. You just need to go to menu 'Settings' and set 'File Change Notification...' option, and then save your settings. But keep in mind, refresh has a delay about 2-3 seconds.
Editplus is great.
This doesn't really answer your question, but it sounds like what you really want is some kind of console view, not a file. Would it be possible to pipe your program's output into an output stream that's visible in a console instead? Those are designed to show new lines as they arrive, automatically scroll, etc.
See the Viewer (F3 option) in FAR file manager, when End button is pressed, it updates and scrolls text automatically
Use Tail For Windows.
Tail doesn't need to have focus on.
I've got it from superuser.com answer.

Text Editor For Linux (Besides Vi)? [closed]

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Let me preface this question by saying I use TextMate on Mac OSX for my text needs and I am in love with it. Anything comparable on the Linux platform? I'll mostly use it for coding python/ruby.
Doing a google search yielded outdated answers.
Edit: Since there has been some concern about the 'merit' of this question. I am about to start a new Ruby Programming Project in Linux and before I got started I wanted to make sure I had the right tools to do the job.
Edit #2: I use VIM on a daily basis -- all . the . time. I enjoy using it. I was just looking for some alternatives.
http://xkcd.com/378/
Emacs is a wonderful text editor. It has huge power once you become a power user. You can access a shell, have as many files open as you want in as many sub-windows and an extremely powerful scripting support that lets you add all kinds of neat features.
I have been using a ruby-mode which adds syntax highlighting and whatnot to ruby, and the same exists for every major language.
If you keep at it, you can use exclusively the keyboard and never touch the mouse, which increases your editing speed by a significant margin.
If you want to start with something a lot more basic though, gedit is nice... it has built in syntax highlighting as well for most languages based on the filename extension. It comes with the OS as well (though emacs you can easily install with apt-get or some similar package finder utility).
UPDATE: I think gedit is exclusively GUI based though, so it would be useful to learn emacs in case you are stuck with just a shell (it is fully featured in both shell and graphical mode).
FURTHER UPDATE: Just FYI, I am not trying to push Emacs over Vim, it's just what I use, and it's a great editor (as I'm sure Vim is too). It is daunting at first (as I'm sure Vim is too), but the question was about text editors on Linux besides vi... Emacs seems the logical choice to me, but gedit is a great simple text editor with some nice features if that's all you are looking for.
Kate, the KDE Advanced Text Editor is quite good. It has syntax highlighting, block selection mode, terminal/console, sessions, window splitting both horizontal and vertical etc.
I use sublime Text on linux.
Try Scribes . It tries to be a TextMate replacement for Linux
2020 edit: forgotten in the mists of history
I use SciTE
very small and simple text editor.
I like the versatility of jEdit (http://www.jedit.org), its got a lot of plugins, crossplatform and has also stuff like block selection which I use all the time.
The downside is, because it is written in java, it is not the fastest one.
I find Geany (http://geany.uvena.de/) quite good.
I use pico or nano as my "casual" text editor in Linux/Solaris/etc. It's easy to come to grips with, and whilst you lose a couple of rows of text to the menu, at least it's easy to see how to exit, etc.
You can even extend nano, I think, and add syntax highlighting.
Alternative text editors? Try Diakonos, "a Linux editor for the masses". The default keyboard mapping is as expected for cut, copy, paste, undo, open, save, etc.
When I searched for TextMate alternative for Linux, I ended up using Geany. It's not as powerfull, but still nice to work with. Great replacement for Kate.
On Mac OS X, I have used BBEdit since the early 1990's, so I use that as my reference for all other editors. I sometimes use BBEdit to edit files on a Linux box using ftp mode, and that works very well if you have a fast network connection to the Linux box.
I learned emacs two years ago because the rest of the programming team I joined uses it. I find emacs powerful but annoyingly old-fashioned in many ways, but once you have learned emacs, you can use it on any platform (Linux, OS X, Windows). This is the editor I use almost exclusively at work now. It is going to take me years to master all its features, though.
I have also used gedit on Linux and found it very usable, but I haven't tried to use it as my primary editor for any project.
I have a colleague at work who uses Komodo Edit 4.4 (free from activestate.com), running it on a Windows computer but using it in ftp mode so she can edit files on our Linux server. Komodo Edit has many nice features, but it takes a looonnnggg time to launch the first time.
Don't forget NEdit! Small and light, but with syntax highlighting and macro record/replay.
Best one besides Vi? Vim.
SciTE
http://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html
The best I've found is gedit unfortunately. Spend a few hours with it and you'll discover it's not so bad, with plugins and themes. You can use the command line to open documents in it.
+1 for pico/nano -- lightweight, gets the job done, good help
Friend of mine swears by jed, http://www.jedsoft.org/jed/
First I don't want to start a war..
I haven't used TextMate but I have used its Windows equivalent, e-TextEditor and I could understand why people love it.
I've also tried many text editors and IDEs in my quest in finding the perfect text editor on Linux. I've tried jEdit, vim, emacs (although I used to love when I was at uni) and various others.
On Linux I've settled with gEdit. Although I do use Komodo Edit from time to time. When I'm in a hurry I use gEdit purely because it is quicker than Komodo Edit.
gEdit has plenty of plugins and comes with some nice colour schemes. I reckon once gEdit has a proper code-tidy facility it'll be cool.
I think the only reason I use Komodo Edit is the project file facility.
I have a friend who donated his 'Vi Improved' book in the hope that he can convert me to Vim. The book is over an inch thick and completely put me off in investing time in learning Vim..
Everytime I find an editor - I always find myself going back to gEdit. It is a frills-in-the-right-places editor. Give gEdit a go, it is the default text editor in Ubuntu and Linux Mint.
Here is a link to an excellent guide on how to get gEdit to look and behave (somewhat) like TextMate:
http://grigio.org/pimp_my_gedit_was_textmate_linux
Hope that helps.
I agree with Mike, though I'm a Vim die-hard. I've been using GEdit quite frequently lately when I'm doing lightweight Ruby scripting. The standard editor (plus Ruby code snippets) is extremely usable and polished, and can provide a nice reprieve from full-strength, always-on programming editors.
I've just started using OSX. Free editors of note that I've discovered:
Komodo by ActiveState. No debugger or regex editor (although one comes with Python, i.e. redemo.py) in free version but perfectly usable.
ERIC, written in PyQT.
Eclipse with PyDev is my preferred option for editing Python on all platforms. Nice clean GUI, decent debugger. Good syntax parsing etc.
I've used Emacs for 20 years. It's great and it works everywhere. I also have TextMate, which I use for some things on the Mac (HTML mode is great). If you want to do Ruby development, Netbeans supports Ruby and it also runs on all platforms.
http://www.netbeans.org/features/ruby/index.html
I've seen some blogs, etc claiming that it's the best Ruby environment available.
I use joe for simple (and not so simple) editing when I'm away from Eclipse.
It uses the classic Wordstar keybindings- although I've never used Wordstar, it's a selling point for many people.
It's easy, well-supported, light-weight and it has binaries available for everything.
I love Kate because it has several interesting features (already cited) usually found in (heavier) IDEs. My favorite feature, however, is its terminal window that is very practical for quickly performing the save-compile-execute combo.
Nedit is another valid option, packed with lots of features (and it hasn't lots of dependencies: that's a huge plus IMHO).
For editing in a shell, when I cannot use VIM, I look immediately for pico or nano (but I would not recommend them for continuous development: for rapid editing they are perfect).
If it's just you? Use what you want to use today; switch in mid-stream if you want.
Is it a team? Try to be editor-agnostic. Set standards for white-space (are tabs allowed? How many spaces does a tab represent?), but otherwise allow anyone to use whichever editor they want.
Is it a team doing pair-programming? That's where you may need a team-standard editor, just so that programmers can easily pass the keyboard.
To help implement a standard white-space policy in a shop where one or more coders is using Emacs: You can tell Emacs about your white-space policy with some comments stuck at the bottom of every file source file. For example,
# Local Variables:
# tab-width: 2
# ruby-indent-level: 2
# indent-tabs-mode: nil
# End:
Anyone using emacs (or xemacs) on that file will automatically get the group standard indentation.
Sublime Text 2 is my favorite.
Intuitively understandable and quite powerful.
You can try Emacs with ruby-mode, Rinari (for Rails) and yasnippet which provides automatic snippets like Textmate.
TextMate is a great editor, and there is a way to replicate some of the functionality in GEdit. Check the article out here: http://rubymm.blogspot.com/2007/08/make-gedit-behave-roughly-like-textmate.html to modify GEdit to behave like TextMate.
Vim is a nice upgrade for Vi, offering decent features and a more usable set of keybindings and default behaviour. However, graphical versions like GVim, KVim and even Cream are extremely lacking in my opinion. I've been using Geany a lot lately, but it also has its shortcomings.
I just can't find something in the league of Programmers Notepad, Smultron or TextMate on Linux. A shame, since I want to live in an all open source cyberworld, I'm stuck hopping from one almost-right editor to another.
I personally use MacVim which is basically a GVim for Mac OSx. However I have been reading alot about Redcar, which is a text editor for Linux, which shares a lot of the Textmate functionality. Checkout the links below.
Redcar
LURG Lecture on Redcar

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