FUNCTION KEYS & CLICKABLE BUTTONS

uCon supports function keys and clickable buttons. Both are located at the top of the main window but may or may not be visable depending on the current view state. The difference between function keys and clickable buttons is minor. Function keys can be engaged by the mouse or the corresponding keystroke, clickable buttons can only be engaged by a mouse click.

Function Keys:
Up to 12 function key assignments can be made (which keys are made available to the user depends on the OS). The function key assignment can be a command or a script name.

By default, the content of the "Text" box will be automatically typed if the corresponding function key is depressed (or the button is clicked). Optionally, the string in the text box can be terminated with the string "\n" (backslash 'n') to add the equivalent of "ENTER" to the string.

The content of the "Label" box is placed in the corresponding function key label on the main window to provide the user with a brief reminder of what is in the function key. Note that not all 12 keys have label boxes, this is because of the limited space used to display the function key labels on the main window.

If the "Script" box is checked, then uCon will assume that the content of the Text box is a filename, and it will be run as a script. This provides a "single click" script execution mechanism.

The "ClearAll" button is a quick way to empty the content of all text in the dialog box. Note that this does not actually take affect until "OK" or "Apply" is depressed.

Clickable Buttons:
There are 16 clickable buttons, if their view state is enabled, they sit just below the function keys in the main window. Generally speaking they provide the same functionality as the function keys, but without the corresponding keystroke (they can only be engaged by a mouse click). They have a dialog box that is similar to that of the function keys, allowing the user to enter the label, text and script enable.

In addition, the buttons have an added feature to allow the capability of each button to expand into things other than just pre-deteremined blocks of text sent to the backend. For lack of a better name, refer to them as button "tags", where the tag is used to assign that button to some other operation. The syntax of the text loaded into the button's "text" editbox is simply...

@@@TAGTEXT: DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

Where... 

@@@          is a fixed prefix
TAGTEXT:     is the name of the tag (followed by 1 colon and 1 space)
DDDDDDD      is the data to be used by the function

Currently supported tags:

@@@LTAG:     place all data into the logging file as a user-loaded entry.

As of this writing there is only one tag specified, but since this is a very simple idea to implement, more tags are sure to follow.

Save that setup!
As of Sept 1, 2008, there's a new sub-item (Fkey2Script) under the Scripts menu that allows you to create a script that can be used later to load up your function keys and buttons with the current setup.