Bl**dy Actions!

[cathodeRay]

Once again I am being driven nuts by PLs obstinate stubborn awkward actions! Why oh why cant we have simple text editable scripting!

Problem: I name and record an action (sets layer attributes (bits and transparency) and then copies a background layer twice and renames the copies). Everything looks as it should in the actions panels, the individual action steps nested under the name. Delete the copies and reset the attributes and then test the action (selected, with 'dialogs off''). Nothing. Zilch. There is more action to be had watching paint dry.

Restart PL, restart the computer, action still there but nothing happens when I run it.

Question: what can stop these blasted actions from running, and what can I do to make the work???

Sorry to be so bolshy but this is really frustrating. I've wasted hours and got nowhere...

cR

[Eurgail]

For me, actions worked fine so far and i didn't try that right now: But scripting is available in the betas! Probably worth looking there...

[cathodeRay]

Yes, actions do normally work (but are still clunky for me). Various peeves:

(a) random unreliability (as in first post)

(b) can't edit the action directly (as text) - so no easy search and replace eg big action with all settings at 127 and you want to change them to 128

(c) can't directly copy and paste an action (have to duplicate then move)

(d) (not 100% sure about this, because at one point it did seem to happen) can't record an action in an action (or move a recorded action into another recorded action: when you select the action, it takes over as the active action)

(e) lively interface eg selecting an action more often than not triggers editing its name

(f) actions seem incapable of recording visibility state changes (change visibility of a layer directly or through the menu (Layer > Display > Show Whatever) but nothing gets recorded. This is a nuisance because which layers are visible matters when doing a merge copy (which includes all visible layers, not just the currently active layer and the visible layers beneath it).

The reason I have been getting frustrated is I am having another go at a proper working wavelet decomposition action(s) which are necessarily rather complex. All being well I will have something to post fairly soon (if Action Frustration doesn't send me mad in the meantime...).

I haven't ventured into the beta versions (not sure of the ground rules for one thing) and so wasn't aware that scripting had been introduced sounds interesting and promising. From PhotoKen's Hello World example, it looks like the scripting may actually be C# coding with compiled binaries, not a script/text/macro based approach. However if it introduces things like variables and state awareness (eg now many layers an image has) it has got to be a great step forwards. Anything as long as it is not Pascal based...

cR

[cathodeRay]

Seems the non-running action thing might be a bug - see here:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5537&start=15#p43047

cR

[Gerhard Huber]

I haven't ventured into the beta versions (not sure of the ground rules for one thing) and so wasn't aware that scripting had been introduced sounds interesting and promising. From PhotoKen's Hello World example, it looks like the scripting may actually be C# coding with compiled binaries, not a script/text/macro based approach. However if it introduces things like variables and state awareness (eg now many layers an image has) it has got to be a great step forwards. Anything as long as it is not Pascal based...

this should be discussed in the beta forum, but just a short answer:
You can use JavaScript, VBScript (Windows), AppleScript (macOS), C# (Windows), Visual Basic (Windows)