Closer look at stage 1
Stage 1 requires a more detailed explanation than stage 2 or 3. Stage 1
itself contains three steps:
Figure 1. Three steps in stage 1
Each of these steps involves the list of valid next screens.- 1(a) Add the names of candidate macro screens to the list of valid next screens.
- 1(b) Do screen recognition to match one of the candidate macro screens to the actual application screen that is currently displayed in the session window.
- 1(c) Remove the names of candidate macro screens from the list of valid next screens.
The list of valid next screens is just a list that can hold macro screen names. The macro runtime creates this list at the beginning of macro playback (before playing back the first macro screen), and discards this list after macro playback is complete. Initially the list is empty (except possibly for transient screens, which are described later in this chapter).
During macro playback, each time the macro runtime needs to determine the next macro screen to be processed, it performs the three steps 1(a), 1(b), and 1(c) using the list of valid next screens.