Macaroon Official Thread and docs: Feel the World of Macros!
 

This thread is now closed and support for Macaroon has been moved to a new thread, here.

Since Maul still dont get an thread for Trinity and Macaroon and ppls need doc on the fantasic bar mod, I decided to open one for him, just for convienience:)

Progression:
Oct 8 22:40 GMT+8 - Finished installing and part of bar creating, likely I've got a clue and will do this fluently after I get some sleep.
Oct 9 7:15 GMT+8 - Updated to 30000.20 since some important options are changed and rest of bar creating is underway.
Oct 9 9:30 GMT+8 - Bar creating finished and looking into visual customization.
Oct 16 15:30 GMT+8 - I'm back in town to finish the bar customization, and the whole document can be expected to be finished tonight.

IF YOU ARE PLAYING ON PTR, READ THIS!!!
Due to the changes made to SecureHandlerStateTemplate (SecureHandlerShowHideTemplate is removed), the newest version of Macaroon will NOT work on PTR 3.0.8. However, dewin posted probably working fix on WOWInterface which is available here:
http://www.wowinterface.com/download...uild3.0.8.html

If you are playing on PTR and wanna use Macaroon, please remember to apply this patch!

Declarations:
1.This is not the official thread of Trinity mods and Macaroon, all instructions and docs here are as of my own experience and habit. All rights of official news and instructions are reserved by Maul himself.
2.Author of this thread is a Asian speaker and dont use English as his common language, so if any sentences and phrases are out of common habit and not understandable, feel free to correct me:)
3.This thread might be updated at a slow pace since covering most questions and aspects of Macaroon can be quite a lot of work and cost a bit time, so if everything goes well, it will be full, but not in one day.

Let's start by a content table:

Post #2 - Installing Macaroon: heading to start.
Post #3 - World of bars: making some foundation.
Post #4 - Beauty and clearity: feeling good now.
Post #5 - Pushing forward: Button works.
Post #6 - Reserved for FAQ and sth. else: wish I dont have to use it.

What is Macaroon?

Directly copied from Maul's post:

Macaroon is a macro-based action bar addon. It can stand on its own or supplement any other action bar addon or even the default Blizzard UI.

Features -

* Macros the size of Texas! (if you think Texas is 1023 characters in size =) )
* An unlimited number of macros, create as many bars/buttons as you want/need per character!

For common users and common sense, you can call it Trinity 3.0, as if it's sequel of well-known action bar mod Trinity 2 which is available here: http://www.wowinterface.com/download...tyBars2.0.html

Macaroon is designed for patch 3.0 and upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion so it will only work on Public Test Realm and WotLK Beta Realms, It WONT work on patch 2.4.3 live realms. For the latest version, get it here: http://www.wowinterface.com/download...-Macaroon.html

Installing?
Same as many, many World of Warcraft mod, the installation is easy: Download the latest version and unrar/zip it to Interface\Addons directory of your WoW installation folder, like "M:\Wrath of the Lich King Beta\Interface\Addons". Make sure there is only one Macaroon and MacaroonProfiles in the Addons folder.
You are done, login onto your beta/PTR and we're good to go!

If you are doing everything right, you'll see them in the Addons Panel at the bottomright corner at your character selection frame.

Setting up bars: Making some foundations

Now login onto your beta/PTR character, and mostly you'll see a blank default UI frame, just like this:


And also, you can find Macaroon's minimap button shiny attaching to your minimap.


Let's start by some tuning up: disable the default blizzard action UI first since we dont need them anymore. Ctrl+Click on the Macaroon minimap button and we'll see the main menu of minimap button. You can reach the main setting menu by going to Game Menu -> Interface -> Select Addons Tab -> Macaroon.


The options are quite similiar to Trinity, so you can be quite quick if you have used Trinity before.
Deselect Enable Blizzard Mainbar, and we'll get rid of the useless default bar UI. A recommendation is that selecting Text cooldown timers and Text Buff/Debuff Timers if you dont have Cooldown count timer mods like OmniCC installed.

Now we got nothing, a clear UI at hand, the true magic comes.
Like Trinity, and unlike Bartender, Macaroon doesn't have any action bar available at first. So what? Create it.
Currently Macaroon's GUI is not implemented yet, as for me the create bar entry minimap button right-click menu dont work, so let do it manually by slash commands.
/mac create bar

EDIT: The create bar menu works in 30000.20 now, you can create a blank bar through that too.

Now we have a shiny blank bar in the middle of the screen:


You can't click on blanks!
Buttons? OK we got no buttons, let's do it. In default the newly created bar is in "Bar edit" mode which means you can freely move it and change its looking and working style, but in this mode you can't drag or remove buttons, either clicking on them. The bar edit mode can also be easily activated by clicking on the Minimap button.
(Oops server restart, let's come back a little later.)

(OK the servers are back, let's continue with the buttons)

In bar edit mode the bars will show it self and becomes blue which means we can easily find and config them, select the bar you wanna deal with to make changes to it. Simply like other bar mods, right click on the bar will bring its config window. Of course you can define them with slash commands but if the GUI is here, why not?


The config screen is quite simple and easy to read, so I'll go to the straight one: Button count controls how many buttons the bar will display. Clicking on it will set the bar to button adding mode, just simply scrolls your mousewheel up and down and you'll see the buttons come and go! It's magic, right?


now we have buttons, just drag the bars to where you want, and simply do this to create as many bars as you want:
Click on the minimap button and drag skills/items onto the bars as usual, we feel better now right?

Beauty and Clearity
Now we have buttons, but wtf it dont fix my playing style?
Patience, let's look deeper into the bar config panel.
The options on the left side of the panel besides button count are all bar visual elements:

Scale - set the scale of the bar, which means you can enlarge it or make it smaller
Shape - change the visual shape of the bar, like square, circle, or circle with one button in the middle. There is only the 3 choices existing now but surely will be more in the future.
Columns - set how many columns the bar will behave, 1X12 or 2X6 or 3X4 or 12X1, changing it from horizontal to vertical, make it more fit your UI design.
Alpha - which means "Transparency" also, make it more visible or more invisible.
Alpha Up - actually this is a bit confusing option to understand, basically I call it fade-in or fade-out, this value defines the alpha when the bar changes its transparency on certain conditions.
Arc-start - Arc is part of one circle, the start value defines if the bar is shaped in arc, which button is the begining of the arc.
Arc Length - as usual, the length of the arc make changes to the space the arc uses, the scale of the buttons and their gap between each other.
Arc Preset - seems it control the arcing style which is pre-defined, I'll need some more check to make sure of it.
Pad Horiz - short for "Padding Horizontal", means the padding between buttons in horizontal direction.
Pad Verti - short for "Padding Vertital", means the padding between buttons in vertital direction.
Pad Horiz+Verti - short for "Padding Horizontal + Vertital", means the padding between buttons bothe in horizontal and vertital directions.

Simple as Button Count, just select the value you wanna change, and use your mousewheel to change it while mouseover the bar.

OK after a bit tuing up, I got 4 bars exactly matching my playstyle :)


Further more, on the other half of the bar control panel are options controlling the bar's actiong behavior:

Paged Bar: checking this will enable this bar to be paged like the default UI main action bar.
Pet: checking this means this bar is a pet bar, reacts if you have a pet/guardian available.
Stealth: this is the option for bar to change it's button when you stealth.
Reaction: set this bar to display a button set based on the current target's friendly/hostile reaction.
Combat: this bar will only show itself while you are engaged in combat.
Group: the bar will only show itself when you are in a group.
Possess: the buttons on the bar changes to the abilities of the unit you are currently in control, like Gorefiend fight and the drakes in Oculus.
Alt Key: set this bar to display another set of buttons when the alt key is held down.
Ctrl Key: set this bar to display another set of buttons when the Ctrl key is held down.
Shift Key: set this bar to display another set of buttons when the alt key is held down.
Custom: the bar will change to another set of buttons on the specific state you define, checking this will bring up the custom state editor, type the state you want the bar to react, the states you can add is exactly like you use in macros.
Autohide: Set this bar to hide itself until it is moused-over
Show Grid: Set this bar to always show empty buttons
Snapto: this is actually "sticky frame" in meaning, just like the feature in other bar mods, the bars will stick to each other when you drag them together.
Hidden: set the bar to be hidden and never show itself.

The custom state is a serie of macro state code which allows you to change the bar's button set on specific states you desire, and what's more, is you can set mulitiple states for the bar to react, not only one like possession, pet, combat, etc.


The state code should be included in a bracket and multiple stats should be devided by a ;. Like this
[actionbar:1];[stance:1];[stance:3];[stance:3,stealth]

the first state is the default one, if the state manager is confused, it will use it as the current state, which is the main action bar.
The later 3 states are the ones to react, I wrote this to reflect a feral druids situation, so the 3 states are: Dire Bear Form (the no. 1 stance on the form bar), Cat Form, and Prowl mode in cat Form. Whenever you switch to those forms, the bar will change to the corresponding button set, and first, you need to switch to this form once to drag ablilities you need onto them.

Reserved for use 4~

Reserved for use 5~
Wish I wont need this much

Very nice! I appreciate it very much...I can spend more time getting Macaroon ready for the 3.0 patch!

:banana:

I still ask myself why Trinity is gone. Where are the advantages of Macaroon?
Don't like to set up all my bars again. :/

Yes, you can define custom "show" states. And as far as targeting, you just need to write them into the macros.

Of mages, multiboxing and macros...mmm?
 

Why is Trinity gone...well, I tried to answer it best in the Trinity Bars and Macaroon threads, but I will try here too :)

First, I need to make an addon that was easier to maintain. The direction I was going with the whole TrinityUI thing was taking that in the wrong direction. I was making things too complex for myself where I almost got to the point that I had to document for myself my own "API".

Second, two things made me delve deeper into the world of macros - playing my mage to 70 and multi-boxing. Prior to that, I was not a heavy macro user. However, while going through the above, I found myself using the macro side of Trinity more and more and began to feel how "clunky" it felt to keep macros up-to-date. So I decided to make a macro-only bar addon - Macaroon.

Third, there are already action bar addon choices out there. I saw a hole for a macro addon. People want more of them. They want longer macros. They want an easier way to manage them. True, there are some macro solutions out there, but there was yet to be a "macro-bar" addon. So I decided to make the first truly macro-focused bar addon. So I started throwing it together, basically starting fresh where I knew I had issues in Trinity (I call them coding knots), but re-using Trinity's code where it was proven to be rock-solid. Macaroon, to me, has proven to be a much more enjoyable addon to code and maintain than Trinity, so I started to see what I could add to it. And I have not stopped adding yet. To date, Macaroon is almost as functional as Trinity. Only a few key features are missing, but I plan to add them as well (like anchor buttons).

I intended to update Trinity, but as I developed Macaroon more, it became obvious to me that the differences to the end user were small. To me, maintaining such addons as an author, the differences were huge. And I was getting plenty of positive feedback from Trinity users, such as being much easier to configure.

Fourth, I decided this time around to get all those extra items put into a totally separate addon, Macaroon Xtras. Those bars had been the most irritating for me to deal with in Trinity, mostly because of mistakes I made in how I set up handling them. But it was not easy to undo those mistakes without doing exactly what I did with Macaroon. Re-write with a clearer direction of where to go and remembering lessons learned.

Fifth, WoW 3.0 brings some big changes to action bar addons, almost to the same level as WoW 2.0. At least from an author's perspective. The whole internal mechanisms had to be re-coded from scratch. I was initially using Macaroon as a "test-bed" for learning the new API. However, it soon became apparent to me that really if I were to keep a "Trinity" addon going, all it would be is a Macaroon addon with a Trinity name. I was faced with possibility of maintaining two addons that were virtually identical for the sake of a name.

Why the name change, then? Why not keep "Trinity"? Well, I felt "Trinity" was feeling heavy. I wanted something that sounded more fun and light. I knew it was going to be a macro-bar addon, so I was looking for Mac-somthing. I went over a bunch in my head. And since I happen to *love* macaroons, it was the name that took. I also wanted to back away from the uni-name titles of my addons. It was a neat idea at first, thinking I would release a whole suite of "Trinity" addons (and indeed during WoW 2.0 I had many more "Trinity" addons I had never released), but yet again, the effort to maintain my own libraries across all the addons was becoming some serious work. So, in the end, I wanted to break away from the Trinity name (not because I don't like it, but because I want to be more creative and flexible in my addon making endeavors) and not lock myself down to a mono-themed name.

So, here we have Macaroon. It is, for all intents and purposes, really Trinity Bars 3.0, but with a new name and a new coding structure that will make it easier for me. So far during the public testing phase of Macaroon, issues have been minimal. And I don't get daily messages of "well, this is broken now, but thanks for fixing this!" which kinda stressed me out, to be honest. I needed to break away from where it was all going or I was just going to throw in the towel and stop publicly making a bar addon. I make addons for enjoyment, and Trinity was not heading in that direction.

Macaroon has been a new invigoration in terms of coding. Everything is falling into place and tough issues I had in Trinity are just being naturally solved via the new coding. The key to this all is that I am aiming to get to a point where I can release a version of Macaroon and it will stay stable for many months until Blizzard API changes affect it, not because I am constantly trying to undo tightly-tied coding knots I made in Trinity's code.

Macaroon is a new breed of bar addon, as well: a macro-bar addon. "Feel the power of macros" is a good catch phrase for it. Trinity was a highly involved action-bar addon that happen to do macros as well. My bar addon focus has shifted, and Macaroon reflects that in both design and name.

I can only hope that most Trinity users will like Macaroon as much as Trinity. The spirit and soul of Trinity is indeed in Macaroon. And I also hope that those who enjoyed the Trinity journey will join me on the Macaroon journey, as it is already going places Trinity has not.

-Maul

Checking it out...I have not kept up on what Bartender is doing. In general, it sounds like it shouldn't be an issue if Macaroon can not already do it. I will let you know...:)

Thanks for that Maul.
Just found the importer and will test Macaroon.

:D

Yeah, one of Macaroons purposes is to make it easier for me to MB lol. I can't wait till 3.0 hits and I get to redo all my MB characters :cool:

Well, the custom state is already possible via the custom option. I am trying to see how the spell targeting works in Bartender based on the linked post.

However...Macaroon does support action ID button types and if you set a bar's target to "focustarget", all action ID based buttons will cast on that target.

I'm not yet very good at macros with conditions but something like that:

/cast [target=focustarget,exists] spell1, [target=focus,noexists] spell2

should work at any bars.
As I said I would have to dig in macros and try that ingame first as that example will propably not workat all, but I'm almost sure it is possible to make using that sort of macro, maybe just a bit more complicated...