Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: A helpful crafting alias
So now let me actually try and contribute something helpful. I noticed Sintrosi's crafting macro required separate macros for each crafting tool. That's not actually necessary with a clever use of aliases.
Here is an alias for cycling between your crafting tools.
But your crafting tools in some toolbar box (mine are in slots 12, 13, and 14). Then define these aliasesthis:
/alias genericTool1 /ui action toolbarSlot12; /alias startGenericTool /genericTool2
/alias genericTool2 /ui action toolbarSlot13; /alias startGenericTool /genericTool3
/alias genericTool3 /ui action toolbarSlot14; /alias startGenericTool /genericTool1
/alias startGenericTool /genericTool1
Every time you execute the startGenericTool alias, it will boot up the selected crafting tool and then rename itself so that the next time you execute startGenericTool it will boot up the next crafting tool.
You can use this as is to cycle between your tools while crafting. Even if your don't like to macro-grind, this is still a useful way to cycle between your crafting tools while manually crafting.
But you can also incorporate it into any grinding macro by replacing the line that starts up the crafting tool with/startGenericTool;
This way you can easily add more tools to the list of cycled tools without having to edit anything else.Just add a genericTool4 alias to the loop.
I'm sure others have thought of this already, but it's not listed anywhere I can find, so I thought to put it here.
This is very helpful. Can you pls offer a step-by-step "for dummies" explanation of what this does? I have a vague recollection of what aliases do.
I'd like to be able to press one button repatedly to cycle through all of my crafting tools. I'd like my macro to switch the toolbar pane to the crafting tool pane, call the crafting tool, then shift me back to my main toolbar pain. I use a macro like this for armor/clothing, it jumps to the armor/clothing toolbar, equips my armor/clothing, tnen jumps back to my main toolbar.
An alias is just a new command that you define which is a synonym for something else.
Example, type:
/alias sitAndSpeak /sit; /mumble I am tired
in your chat window. This defines a new command named: sitAndSpeak. Then type in your chat window:
/sitAndSpeak
To execute this new command. When you do that, your character will sit down and mumble "I am tired", just as if you had typed these two items separately:
/sit
/mumble I am tired
That's how aliases work.
What the aliases I listed do is define a new command called: startGenericTool. Whenver you type:
/startGenericTool
your generic crafting tool will be started, and then the startGenericTool command will be redefined at the same time.That way, the next time you type /startGenericTool,a differentcrafting tool will be used.
Just looking for an opinion: what do you see as the advantage of an alias over a macro, other than the very clever use you pointed out here?
For example, I was having problems saying things like "attack" or "group" in guild chat. Plus, until a kind Creature Handler fixed it for me (thanks Slartibart!) my pets had been given different commands. So, I created macros that I could run instead. I don't put them in my toolbar, I just run them using the /macro command, which you can abbreviate /m.
So, I type /m follow, which executed amacro called "follow": /tellpet follow; /tellpet follow me;
Do you see a significant advantage if I were to change this to an alias (i.e. /alias followme /tellpet follow)?
Just curious. 
In many cases, there is little difference. The big differences i see are:
1) its easy to write a very long macro. writing a very long alias is quite tedious and difficult to edit later if needed.
2) aliases can be redefined on the fly by other macros or aliases. macros can't. this has the negative side effect that its easy to accidentally delete and alias.
3) you can drag and drop macros from the macro window to your toolbar. you can't do that with aliases.