WowAce

Hey there Shadowed! You've done a very fine job with this addon! However, it has a couple of bugs/flaws:

1. You are going to have to find a better "compress/uncompress" routine. I know that you are doing it so that you can store newlines without actually creating newlines in the LUA savedvariables file, but there is a major flaw: First, every \n becomes /n on "compression". Then, on "uncompression", every /n becomes a newline (\n), this is macro-breaking if the macro contains ANY slashcommand that begins with /n and needs to be fixed immediately. You could store newlines as something like %#NL#% or whatever you want, as long as it's something that is unlikely to conflict with macro contents.

2. When restoring macros to the action bars, it checks that the macroID still contains with a macro with identical (expected) textcontents; this is good, as it verifies that you will be placing the correct macro on the action bars. However, it is quite flawed. Here's why:

* Scenario 1 (best case): When the id and data matches, it has a 100% match and puts it on the bars. Good.
* Scenario 2: When the macro has moved around and has a new ID, it re-scans all macros, looking for one with the same textdata and if so, updates the location and puts it on the bars. Good.
* Scenario 3 (worst case, but very common): No macro with the expected textcontents can be found! It means that it has either been deleted or had its contents changed. To try to find it again, ABS scans through all macros looking for one with an identical *NAME*, and at the first match, it assumes it has found the macro.

This is horrible. Why? Well, when you want macros to look good on your bars, a lot of people name them with a single space (or more), which means that the macro button will look as clean as any other spell (and not have an ugly textfield attached to it). However, this means that the ABS scan routine will *just about always* find the wrong macro since all macros are named with a single space as title. Now, how common is this error? Well, it will happen EVERY TIME you edit a macro, if you have such a macro-title setup. You'll be in one spec, then edit a macro (as you often do), and then swap spec. Voila, the scanner will no longer find the macro using textcontent scans and will resort to grabbing the first macro it can find, guaranteeing a mismatch in most cases.

The solution? First, make the scanner generate a list of all macros with a particular title. If there is just one, you have your match (most likely), and can return the new ID.

If there are more than one, you have two solutions:

* Create a diff-type scanner that looks at the text of all the found macros and the expected textcontents and grab whichever macro has the least diff-count (the least amount of differing characters). This will guarantee that it finds macros that have had minor changes, but is still not perfect since it could grab the wrong macro if you've made MAJOR changes to your macro.
* The other, much better and much EASIER solution (for you) would be to open up a tiny floating window that says "Macro on Action Bar 3, Column 4 not found! Please select the correct macro:" and offering a clickable list of all macros that had a matching title. Show a small text-area with the expected/old macro text, and another text area that shows the content of whatever macro you last selected. This lets the user click through the various macros, find the match, and hit "Select".

The first flaw (macro-breaking newlines) is vital. The latter is not as important, but would be extremely good if you could add.


Sincerely,
The Jew

I just updated and lost all my saved stuff, is there a way to get it back?

Apparently this only works for spells and not keybinds?

Question, does this include binds and bar button amounts or just spells?

Shadowed - have you noticed that your addon doesn't save the equipment sets? When I drag equipment sets to the bar and save it, the next time I restore them, they're not restored with the rest of the bars.

I have the same problem, it seems to remove those buttons on every restore no matter what.

This addon works wonders. I'm currently using it with Bartender4 on my Druid.

I only have 2 problems with it - the insane noise it makes while activating profiles, and the slight lag it causes. Otherwise great work!

Actually, I'm more than disappointed to say that the mod doesn't work while in combat. Usefulness dropped to 0/10.

I tested it with my simple Lv.20 setup... Bear Form = "bear". Default Form = "tauren". I set up multiple macros to switch forms/bars.

BEAR FORM

#showtooltip
/cast Bear Form(Shapeshift)
/abs restore bear

---

DEFAULT FORM

/cancelform
/abs restore tauren

When in combat, "/abs restore *name*" refuses to work. Even when typing it into the chatbar and hitting enter, nothing happens.

The mod is good for switching bars outside of combat, but not much else.

Instead of trying to flame me, why not help me understand the problem? Or even a work-around would be great.

I was searching for a solution, essentially, to the 10 Action Bar limit Blizzard has on the game. Bartender is great when it comes to paging bars, but there's just not enough of them. I saw your addon, read the description, and figured it was worth a shot.

I can drag and drop spells and abilities from my spellbook while in combat, why won't this work?

He was right to flame you.

The purpose of this addon is to save your action bars for a given talent spec. You can only have two specs, but what if you can do more than two things?

For instance, what if you are primarily a DPS player, and you raid and PvP a lot, however you also have a tank set. You may want to switch your DPS or PvP Spec to a tank spec. Doing so would require you to set up your buttons every single time you did this.

What you want, is not this addon, but something Bartender already allows for -- You have to set up your bars to work with forms. You can set more than one bar to change over when you switch to bear form iirc.

The other alternative is to use macros for your other buttons, like
/cast [stance:1] something; [stance:2] somethingelse


Most addons don't let you change things around much while in combat, btw.

Addons have been prohibited from changing buttons since 2.0. This is to prohibit addons from making things too automated; there used to be addons that all the healer did was click the one button repeatedly; the addon would automatically target the needed player and select the most efficient rank of the needed spell. (It basically sucked all the fun out of healing.)

"It basically sucked all the fun out of healing."

As if there was any to begin with lol.

Might as well call this add-on "Life Saver". Thank you so much!

You can't make a screenshot of this addon cause it's functionality is by slashcommands. Furthermore the only thing to show would be an actionbar, which has nothing to do with the addon itself.

This addon is as simple as doing emotes, but saves tons on time on setting up actionbars. I wanted to switch my second talent and make it my first, so I saved the 2 types of setup, changed talents and the used this addon to restore the actionbars so they matched tank and dps.

GREAT SIMPLE ADDON!

As a druid that frequently swaps between pve bear, pve cat, pvp feral and soon to be pve / pvp resto specs, this mod is amazing. Thanks.