Original review published on Steve Litchfield's 3-Lib.

(Previously known as SwitchTask)

Clever chaps, these programmers, conjuring functions up from nowhere that Psion themselves should really have thought of. Pascal Nicolas is one such programmer and his latest offering is one of several system utilities recently released for the Series 5. Macro5 exists to do four things:

1. it lets you cycle through running programs
2. it runs macros (much like the old MacSys did on the 3a/3c)
3. it offers panels of shortcuts to documents, applications and macros
4. it controls backlight and screen contrast (well, seeing as it's going to be in memory and running anyway, why not? 8-) )

I've been looking at v2.30beta, grabbed from Pascal's web site.

Macro5 is presented well enough, with all dialogs being easy to follow and interact with. The core task-switching function works very well using exactly the same modus operandi as Windows's Alt-TAB system, where you cycle through each process in turn (here using Control-Space by default) and release the keys when reaching the one you want. Curiously, it doesn't let you switch back to itself, for some reason...

The 'Shortcuts' hot-key works very well, bringing up three panel of (up to 27) possible choices, each pointing to either a program, document, text fragment, macro or shortcut. Pascal supplies a few example shortcuts, though of course you can redefine them and plenty of your own on each panel. With the large folder structures that our Series 5s tend to accumulate, being able to quickly open up specific documents is a particular boon.

The macro facilities are in many ways analagous to the old Series 3 MacSys, requiring a degree of programming knowledge to get working properly. All very welcome, though, with Pascal shielding the user to a limited extent with higher level calls to the more esoteric system functions. Again, he supplies some welcome examples to get you started and a simple recording function lets you construct macros simply from repetetive key sequences. Like MacSys (and I guess programming in general), Macro5 could become a whole new way of life for a Psioneer....

The screen controls work well enough, though of course there are 1001 other utilities which also perform this function if they're all you require. Macro5 is well programmed and conceived and I found myself surprised at what it could do. Oh yes, and have I mentioned it's completely free? 8-)

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