CFOG's PIP, October 1988, Volume 7 No. 5, Whole No. 67, page 74

Editing VDE Function Key Macros

by Benjamin H. Cohen

I was cleaning up my RAM disk the other day (there's never enough space, even in a 2 Mb RAM disk, especially when each file takes up a minimum of 4K bytes) and realized that I had a VDK file and a VDT file. You do use VDE, don't you? And you do use its macro function keys, I hope. And you do use VDKCOM so that you can edit the macros in a text file and then compile them into a VDK file that can be installed with VDE, I hope. Well, it occured to me that I don't really need to keep a copy of the VDK file around. It's only necessary to install the function key macros, and I won't need to install them until I modify them. That's done in the VDT file, the one with the text.

So I modified the submit file that I use when I want to modify my function keys by adding a line. Now it reads this way:

vde benz.vdt a
vkcom benz.vdt
vinst vde.com benz.vdk
era benz.vdk

The first line takes me in to edit my VDT file, with VDE, of course, in ASCII mode. The sccond line 'compiles' the VDT file into a VDK file. The third line runs the installation program, loading the new macros into VDE. The fourth line erases the now superfluous VDK file.