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CUE Can't even assign a macro to Control+E?


mountaindev

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After setting up the M65 mouse, was so impressed with the power of CUE, I went all in for a keyboard also. Until now I'm forced to ask...

 

Does CUE really lack the most basic macro functionality imaginable?

 

I just want to assign a text macro to Control-E. That's it. It would just type an email address. And CUE can't handle that!?

 

Searched around a bit and found this Tutorial: Switching Modes by Modifier Keys, but if I'm reading it right (hope I'm not) it's essentially a worthless technique.

 

It basically says (for my case), create a dedicated profile only for the Control key. Then within other profiles, assign the Control key to switch to the Control profile as long as the key is held down.

 

The massive problem with this approach is, because you have taken over the normal functionality of the control key, all of the control key shortcuts in all of your apps become completely disabled.

 

The tutorial says the way to fix this is to write down a list of every control key shortcut key you'll ever want to use in all of your apps, and recreate a macro for it from scratch within the new control key profile you've just created. Are you kidding me?

 

Not only is that a ridiculous waste of time, what if you ever want to install a new app on your system? Every time you get a new app, you should figure out what built in shortcuts you need to recreate from scratch?

 

Oh, and btw, go through the same process all over again if you want to assign a macro for any Alt key combo. And again for Shift-Alt. And again for...well, hopefully you can see the problem.

 

Simple key modified macros are some of the most basic functionality any power user would want in a keyboard, and this is a train wreck.

 

Has anyone heard if Corsair is planning an update relating to this?

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I am at work in a meeting, but I can elaborate later, I understand the frustrations, but I do not think you should need to remap ctrl in the ctrl profile each time (I dont) and it works fine with keep default output set.

 

The ctrl profile would only be to change lighting, unless you want CUE to handle the multi key enabled macro, which would would need to assign an action in that case, but you're better off not doing that, just making the profiles for lighting and then setting up an AHK script along side it to handle the more complex enabled macros.

 

I'll elaborate later

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Thanks for your reply, I appreciate any feedback I can get on this.

 

I understand it’s possible to go out and get macro software, but that’s kind of the point, you shouldn’t have to get other software.

 

Wasn't sure if you were saying there’s a wa6 to not redo all the shortcuts. I tried everything I could find, don’t see how it’s possible (without changing cue). But if I’m missing something then great.

 

A few reasons this situation seems nuts:

 

- It’s such a basic feature compared to what cue already does, it’s such a small feature extension, it seems a crime not to just go a bit farther to add it.

 

- Money. There are people who don’t use corsair for gaming at all, adding this could help them sell more stuff. I don’t game (wish i had more time to), just want all the same input speed gamers do for coding. But whoever the demand is coming from, I’ve already noticed half a dozen posts from people wanting this feature.

 

- AHK (autohotkey) has its issues. I actually was using it for a while but had to stop because it was glitchy in my use cases. Also it’s not the most fun software to setup. I’ve heard people say they don’t like it because it’s like coding and they don’t code. Well guess what, coders don’t like that kind of coding either :). I don’t want to put it down too much, it’s been really successful and is powerfulI, but even it’s creator admits the scripting is jenkity.

 

One ring to rule them all: Why use multiple apps, learn multiple feature sets and/or scripting, and maintain multiple config files? I don’t mind doing that if there’s some benefit, but having CUE support the basics would allow more people to get by with a single way to dial in their devices if they wanted a unified system.

 

thanks -

 

 

 

 

I am at work in a meeting, but I can elaborate later, I understand the frustrations, but I do not think you should need to remap ctrl in the ctrl profile each time (I dont) and it works fine with keep default output set.

 

The ctrl profile would only be to change lighting, unless you want CUE to handle the multi key enabled macro, which would would need to assign an action in that case, but you're better off not doing that, just making the profiles for lighting and then setting up an AHK script along side it to handle the more complex enabled macros.

 

I'll elaborate later

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Wasn't sure if you were saying there’s a way to not redo all the shortcuts. I tried everything I could find, don’t see how it’s possible (without changing cue). But if I’m missing something then great.

Yes, if you just create a copy of the profile you are referring to, let's say of the default profile. Call it "Ctrl"

 

Go back to default profile, make a new profile switching action, set the switching mode to direct profile selection and pick from the drop down list the newly created ctrl profile. Click the gears at the far right for advanced settings and ensure that retain original key out put is selected. Then bind the profile switching action to ctrl, lets say left ctrl. Make a copy, click the right control key.

 

Then go to the ctrl profile and make your new macro or text replacement whatever and bind it to E.

 

Then you are all set. Ctrl and E will effect the action you just assigned to E.

 

 

This is good and this isn't good. For one, it is not that easy to maintain. Also, if you are doing this in the default profile, you will inevitably pick some keyboard shortcut you will end up needing in another application, perhaps you didnt think of or didnt have before. You're better off doing this in a specific application, or not at all and letting AHK or the application or some other method remap or perform the macro, or a mix of the behavior.

 

- AHK (autohotkey) has its issues. I actually was using it for a while but had to stop because it was glitchy in my use cases. Also it’s not the most fun software to setup. I’ve heard people say they don’t like it because it’s like coding and they don’t code. Well guess what, coders don’t like that kind of coding either :). I don’t want to put it down too much, it’s been really successful and is powerfulI, but even it’s creator admits the scripting is jenkity.

 

AHK may not be "programmer" language, but I only started using it about 1 - 1.5 years ago and I think it is truly amazing, even if parts were...stolen so to speak. No need to compile, fast editing, fast performance, adaptability and easy to debug. Inter operability is amazing alongside CUE in my experience, inside of outlook, photoshop, sketchup, probably anywhere. Like cue, AHK can decide what to do based on the active window/application and then perform a different set of actions.

 

Cue allows me to take that a step further and set colors based on one of those modifier profiles even if it is application specific and either perform basic macro actions, or letting the output of the buttons perform whatever actions are needed based on external recognition.

 

- Money. There are people who don’t use corsair for gaming at all, adding this could help them sell more stuff. I don’t game (wish i had more time to), just want all the same input speed gamers do for coding. But whoever the demand is coming from, I’ve already noticed half a dozen posts from people wanting this feature.

Definitely, I have oft thought Corsair was missing market share because their hardware is so exceedingly beyond anything I have seen or used, even from Logitech as far as typing speed, efficiency and build quality and it isn't even like the software is lacking in my experience, i've used logitech software and I don't recall massively better macro stuff being available...it was about the same as CUE.

 

There is no question that what you are suggesting is a nice feature that everyone might love and at least have a different single point approach.

 

That said, this is where we are at with the hardware and the software and I am happy with my setup and I bet you will be too once you get it in order.

 

Let me know if you understand what I meant about the profiles and switching. With subsequent profile switching, like going to ctrl alt or ctrl alt shift or ctrl shift etc from ctrl and anything like that, you want to be sure you do not have while pressed checked in those subsequent profiles, so cue knows to go back to the first position, not a subsequent one in case you release them in not the same order. Also, I have noticed this is less than reliable if program focus is lost, but I am confident they can fix that or at least in the SDK they will eventually give us the/or an ability to force profile switching. Currently you can roundabout poll for the profile which further adds to its extensibility.

 

I know hardly anything about CPP, but was able to figure this out based on their examples to get the G and Mouse keys (which AHK can poll for, even with modifiers - so instead of 18 macro keys on the k95 i have like 72 I think because Alt behaves weird). http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=172374&page=2 This works well along side my AHK and they both run in the background, cooperate and it doesn't get in my way once i run them.

 

 

Can i ask what was glitchy in your use case with AHK? I've had my share of problems but I've gotten fairly well versed in it and I think I can give you some suggestions. I'm a relative idiot and Ive been amazed with what I've achieved between its built in regex replacement, clipboard access etc

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After setting up the M65 mouse, was so impressed with the power of CUE, I went all in for a keyboard also.

 

I just want to assign a text macro to Control-E.

 

Searched around a bit and found this Tutorial: Switching Modes by Modifier Keys.

 

It basically says (for my case), create a dedicated profile only for the Control key. Then within other profiles, assign the Control key to switch to the Control profile as long as the key is held down.

 

The massive problem with this approach is, because you have taken over the normal functionality of the control key, all of the control key shortcuts in all of your apps become completely disabled.

 

The tutorial says the way to fix this is to write down a list of every control key shortcut key you'll ever want to use in all of your apps, and recreate a macro for it from scratch within the new control key profile you've just created. Are you kidding me?

 

No, Corsair is NOT kidding you. Consider this: The CUE (Corsair Utility Engine) is primarily designed to allow customization of the hardware functionality of the Corsair peripheral devices,both for lighting and for key functions.

 

Unlike nearly everybody you will find on this forum, I bought the Corsair keyboard primarily for the keybinding functionalities--the lighting is not really important to me at all.

 

If you read the USB peripheral interface specification, you will see that the keyboard is supposed to just send out, for a control key, just one keystroke. The state of the control key having been pressed is latched at the operating system, not in the keyboard itself (and if Corsair adds a hardware register to mirror the state of the control key, it would also have to use extra communication channels back and forth to the system to ensure that the state of control keys being pressed stored in the keyboard are the same as that which is held by the operating system, and there are myriad reasons why the system can discard this status, such as switching users, etc.)

 

It is to my mind not at all difficult to define each of the control sequences (apart from CTRL/E) to act in the CONTROL profile exactly as they behaved otherwise--because this is a simple matter of defining a REMAP KEY for character A to the KEYSTROKE of CTRL/A and so on for all the ASCII control codes except for E, where you would put your custom function.

 

The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) defines exactly 32 control codes, so this is all the redefinitions one would need.

 

If you are going to use this technique frequently (as opposed to, say, creating a specific profile or profile folder where you control binding would take effect only for a specified associated executable program), then you would find it good to create a single generic CONTROL profile that defines all 32 of these control sequences. You would then make copies of this profile for customization purposes, and not have to worry about ever needing to redefine the default control sequences ever again. This really is not too hard, although combining this with unshifted and other bucky-bits like META, HYPER and SUPER, and adding in SHIFT, TOP and FRONT modifier keys means you can define 128 combinations (including unmodified) for every single key on the keyboard--this is a very power technique indeed, allowing one to have Corsair act like a Space Cadet keyboard.

 

So CUE is very powerful, but this power does come at a cost, of course. For this reason, many people rely on a program designed to act on the operating system, rather than device, level, and take the input received (which CUE can modify as indicated) and then perform further translations. People often like software such as AutoHotkey.

 

As these programs are generic, they do not use or extend the power of the peripheral hardware--they would work as well well with a generic keyboard as they would with Corsair keyboards, and as they work on the computer, they must intercept every keystroke and determine whether any translation or actions are to be performed. Being generic and already widely available, why would Corsair reinvent the wheel adding bloat to their software instead of, say, working to allow for secondary actions a lighting effect to be able to start at the second key, instead of the middle of the keyboard? Or perhaps allowing us to program the keyboard to emit some of the USB sequences defined for additional keys that are not physically present?

 

Like you, I am repulsed at the thought of not just using CUE to control what my keyboard emits. Besides, Corsair even provides hardware-programmable keyboards and mice that can be programmed by CUE within the device firmware, so that one can take the keyboard or mouse to other computers, and the peripheral will work the same way on them, as no special driver or software is needed on the computer--everything just works. This also means that one doesn't need to worry about computer security of such things, as key-logging debugging backdoors can steal your passwords, etc.

 

But if you find the power of CUE to be overkill for your needs, then by all means, just go the host-based software route. Just realize that there is hardly much reason to complain about CUE's power.

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Probably the smartest thing anyone ever posted on here :)

 

and other bucky-bits like META, HYPER and SUPER, and adding in SHIFT, TOP and FRONT modifier keys means you can define 128 combinations (including unmodified) for every single key on the keyboard--this is a very power technique indeed, allowing one to have Corsair act like a Space Cadet keyboard.

 

So for my understanding, is a bucky-bit just a generic or abstract term for a modifier key? Are you saying that you for example have profiles inside CUE that are arbitrary modifier states? Like you have let's say G18 be a profile switcher? That way you'd have ctrl, alt, shift, ctrl alt, ctrl alt shift, shift alt,, ctrl shift and alt shift as well as G18+Ctrl G18+Alt ....? Basically I like it :biggrin:

 

(I see that it is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucky_bit)

 

But as a practical matter, in my day to day experience, these sequential modifier modes get stuck and have to be manually switched back. That's my only complaint right now with CUE, i wish there was a programmatic way we could talk back to it and say switch back to ___ profile at your earliest convenience good sir/madamme. Sadly, we need to have a key set to switch back to the default every time it gets stuck which for me happens a lot when i switch out of a program specific folder (Photoshop for example).

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  • 3 months later...
...i wish there was a programmatic way we could talk back to it and say switch back to ___ profile at your earliest convenience good sir/madamme. Sadly, we need to have a key set to switch back to the default every time it gets stuck which for me happens a lot when i switch out of a program specific folder (Photoshop for example).

 

Great idea - If the CUE team added just this small feature, if I’m understanding right it could possibly resolve or simplify many of the problems discussed here.

 

I bet it might even be minimal coding and time for a developers to implement. No worrying about OS level specifics, no reinventing the wheel of AutoHotKey, and it makes sense as a feature because it compliments the profile architecture of CUE in a elegant and generalized way.

 

Do the devs ever come to these boards? If so I officially offer to buy them and a friend or significant other dinner at a fine restaurant, if they can find a way to slip this in. I’m serious, like a closed source bounty or something? :biggrin:

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Do the devs ever come to these boards? If so I officially offer to buy them and a friend or significant other dinner at a fine restaurant, if they can find a way to slip this in. I’m serious, like a closed source bounty or something? :biggrin:

Totally, we can even above board it - like a crowdfunded kick starter where Corsair could take the profits and pay out taxes etc. We cannot be the only people of interested - I really think it is a blatant missing feature of CUE iCUE that could be added to the SDK easily or a command line parameter. Triggering it should be a fairly easy fix given the farcry integration appearing to activate profiles, unless it has its own QT implementation.

 

My Money is In! :sunglasse

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  • 6 months later...

I think profile approach is suit for me, assign combination key such CTRL+E to certain macro on default profile will generate conflict with combination key that had registered to an appliction.

 

I will frustate while click CTRL+E at word processing application, instead center text it just send an email.

 

When i would like run macro, I prefer to switch profile and click single key. An many application has own macro implemented.

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