procedure menu

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This menu lets you record a sequence of operations in a file called a procedure. You can play back procedure files and repeat complex operations repeatedly. The recording mechanism lets you introduce pauses into the stream of instructions, where the user of the procedure is prompted to supply information that may vary from one run to another.

To record a procedure:

  1. Enter the name you want for the procedure file in the Procedure menu field. Then click on BEGIN NEW PROCEDURE. You can now do anything you want in the program, and it will be recorded.
  2. When you get done, return to this menu, and click on END PROCEDURE AND STORE IT. This will store the procedure in the procedure file.

While recording a procedure, you can insert a pause, which lets the user of the procedure do things that may vary from run to run. To insert a pause, click on the little Pause/Resume box at the top of the screen. The system will ask you for a prompt for the pause. Enter instructions that will tell the user what you expect him/her to do. Then do what you have just told the user to do, and hit the Pause/Resume box again. On playback, the system will hit the pause, display your prompt, and let the user take control. When the user finishes, he/she relinquishes control by hitting Pause/Resume. Note: the user may work only within whatever menu is displayed when the pause takes over. Trying to change to another menu within a pause will abort the pause and probably mess up the procedure.

To play back a procedure:

  1. Enter the name of the procedure you want to play back in the Procedure menu field.
  2. Click on RECALL PROCEDURE AND EXECUTE IT. The procedure will start immediately. You can introduce a time delay between procedure steps by entering a delay in the Time delay between steps menu field.

When recording a procedure, it can happen that you want to enter a name for a file into a menu, but that name may change from one execution of the procedure to another. To get around this, you can enter an environment variable as the file name. For example, you can use the operating system command setenv outfile xyz (under UNIX) or outfile:=xyz (under VMS) before running IcoMetrics, and then enter a file name as $outfile (when recording the procedure). This results in a procedure that can be used on files with different names, just by issuing setenv before running it.