Dynamic Macro

[tshino]

I've been asked if it is possible to implement Dynamic Macro on VS Code by its inventor @masui.

Dynamic Macro is a clever technique to perform repetitive operations.
See the paper (CHI 1994) for the details.

My understanding is that:
with Dynamic Macro, it doesn't require users to declare to start recording and to stop recording, instead, requires just to request to repeat the sequence the user has just repeated right before.

In order to implement it, the mechanism to record the keyboard inputs has to be always active rather than only during recording.
It means the wrapper keybindings is going to be used always.
This will be a big change to the internal behavior of this extension.

So, I think it is better to be an opt-in feature if implemented in this extension.

I will investigate further design impact and implementation.

[tshino]

One obvious design change needed for this feature is changing the condition to activate the wrapper keybindings.
Specifically, the context used in the condition has to be changed from kb-macro.recording to a different one.
At this moment, candidates of the name for the new context include kb-macro.active, kb-macro.monitoring, kb-macro.listening.

This:

    {
        "key": "ctrl+shift+a",
        "command": "kb-macro.wrap",
        "args": {
            "command": "editor.action.selectToBracket"
        },
        "when": "kb-macro.recording && editorTextFocus" // LOOK AT THIS LINE!
    }

has to be changed to something like:

    {
        "key": "ctrl+shift+a",
        "command": "kb-macro.wrap",
        "args": {
            "command": "editor.action.selectToBracket"
        },
        "when": "kb-macro.active && editorTextFocus" // LOOK AT THIS LINE!
    }

.

This requires existing users to manually modify their keybindings.json if they want to enable the new DynamicMacro feature.

[tshino]

I have started the implementation of this new feature as a separate vscode extension in separate repository:
https://github.com/tshino/vscode-dynamic-macro

The new extension Dynamic Macro declares dependency to this extension in its extension manifest (extensionDependencies in package.json) so that it can access APIs provided by this extension.

[tshino]

Finally, the new version of this extension has been released!
https://github.com/tshino/vscode-kb-macro/releases/tag/v0.13.0

It includes brand new functionality Background Recording API that makes it possible to create keystroke automation extensions using this extension's capabilities.
There were a lot of design decisions and implementations with careful tests.
The new extension Dynamic Macro, which is the purpose of this big new feature of this extension, now can work with the released version of this extension and will be ready to be published.