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Open Source Macro Programs?
BlueCup asks: "I've wanted to switch to Linux for quite a while, but my work requires a lot of automated tasks. For these tasks I have global macros set up using Toolsworks and Macro Express. So far I've looked for equivalents for Linux, but have been unsuccessful. Does anyone know of a similar program that reaches the same level of complexity of the above programs for Linux?"
ah silly me. he wanted powerful configurable hot buttons(call them what you want)..
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world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
These in-between macro systems have always struck me as eventually pretty rendundant and/or useless. At first most started as fairly simple GUI automation gadgets, sending window messages to this or that window, etc. Then they started adding some simple expression evaluation to make them a bit more robust, and eventually they ended up with a pretty much full-blown scripting language. Except that they are quite proprietary and still require a fairly steep learning curve. It begs the question why one wouldn't simply choose a general purpose interpreted language like Python that is truly cross-platform, is very expressive, and has very strong GUI bindings? I think the difference between learning the macro language of one of these proprietary thingies and learning something like Python is fairly minimal, and the advantage with learning Python is that you will know an established programming language that implements modern language concepts, not someone's idea of what a scripting subsystem needs.
There are any number of scripting languages which work well at the top level. Fewer work well as an "embedded" language. Three which fall into that category are Tcl, REXX and AppleScript. (Someone else mentioned DCOP.) Of those, Tcl is libre. There's probably a libre version of REXX floating around somewhere, but it doesn't matter too much. I would pick Tcl. Take a look at how DFS and Expect have embedded Tcl. Expect can also use Perl, but Perl isn't quite as seamless in that space.
AppleScript, although not free, is interesting for two reasons. (1) It uses Open Scripting Architecture, which separates the language syntax from the execution engine. (2) It has been used from the start for scripting GUI-like interactions, which is the kind of "macro" language which the original poster had in mind.