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Application Automation with TCC

Take Command has several ways to automate your tasks. It includes a macro recorder that will record and play back keystrokes and mouse actions. You can control the macro recorder several ways:

1.Win-F11 - Start / stop macro recording

2.Win-F12 - Start / stop macro playback

3.Record & Playback buttons on the Quick Access toolbar

4.Record & Playback buttons on the Take Command Tools menu

5.The TCC RECORDER internal command

When the macro recorder is running, the buttons on the Quick Access toolbar and the Take Command Tools menu will be highlighted. Take Command will also display macro recording or macro playback in an OSD window on the bottom right corner of the display.

KEYSTACK

Another way to automate your tasks is with the internal KEYSTACK command. KEYSTACK takes a series of keystrokes and feeds them to a program or command line as if they were typed at the keyboard. When the program has used all of the keystrokes in the keystack buffer, it will begin to read the keyboard for input, as it normally would.

KEYSTACK is useful when you want a program to take certain actions automatically when it starts. It is most often used in batch files and aliases.

KEYSTACK will send the keystrokes to the currently active window. If you want to send keystrokes to another program (not TCC itself), you must start the program or ACTIVATE its window so it can receive the keystrokes. You must do this before executing the KEYSTACK command.

KEYSTACK is most often used for programs started from batch files. In order for KEYSTACK to work in a batch file, you must start the program with the START command, then use the KEYSTACK command. If you start the program directly (without using START) the batch file will wait for the application to complete before continuing and running the KEYSTACK command, and the keystrokes will not appear in the target program.

The KEYSTACK command overcomes two weaknesses of input redirection:

1) some programs ignore standard input and read the keyboard through Windows APIs, and

2) input redirection doesn't end until the program or command terminates. You can't, for example, use redirection to send the first few commands to a program and then type the rest of the commands yourself. But KEYSTACK lets you do exactly that.