New "Macro Strings", Macro's Reborn!

[kingfury]

I don't know any details about the game's code, but I don't think anything about this would be particularly hard to do.
They'd have to add functionality to macros that would let them execute "Strings", and that might be hard depending a lot of different things. A "String" is basically a macro, and an actual "String" call acts kind of like an array. I don't know whether or not that would be hard to implement based on how the game accepts commands, but it is basically adding a second dimension to commands so it might be hard.
/do thing1
-game: ok. *does thing1*
/do thing2
-game: ok. *does thing2*
etc...
--------------------------------------
stuff1 =
{/do thing1
/do thing2}
stuff2 =
{/do thing3
/do thing4}
/do stuff1-2
-game: huh?
One question we have to ask is why we can't already use a macro within a macro, because that's essentially what this is only with the added complexity of calling multiple macros in one command.

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Great example ^^/ Yet I would only hope that the problem is this simple!
Looking at your example:
stuff2 =
{/do thing3
/do thing4}

/do stuff1-2
-game: huh?

You're absolutely right based on FFXI's current syntax language. It's like asking an English speaking person to speak Spanish on the spot lol. SE would have to simply teach the system a bit of Spanish so to speak ^^. So the new bits of language would be:

/do stuff 1-3=
{/do thing1
/do thing2
/do thing3}
Where "-" = and/or until you complete
-game: Oooohh! Is that what that means? No problem /wave
-game: *does thing 1, 2, and 3*
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I would think the good thing about "programing" is being able to re-teach a system how to process new/old types of data as the need arises to do so. Just look at what they did with the new <wait #> command. Essentially they just re-taught the system how to process/read the syntax. In other words(based on the analogy I used above), the system understands both the English (/wait #) and the Spanish (<wait #>) languages of the same command.

Try not to think only of our current macros in regards to the possibilities of if our system could handle the proposed concept. FFXI houses this very same complex nestled functionality in just about every other menu option we use in-game. A good example would be navigating to the equipment menu to change your gear. In essence one could reach the equipment menu by using the menu to navigate to our weapons and then select the weapon we want to swap in:

Menu > Equipment > Main Weapon > Widowmaker = Finished

But, we have the functionality to bypass those steps with one string of syntax:

/equip Main "Widowmaker" = Finished

Picture this process for a moment the same as the Macro issue at hand:

line 1. do something > line 2. do something > line 3. do something > Finish

Where the Macro String would be the equivalent solution as the equipment syntax:

/macrostring <"Title 1"> = Finished

So, my point would be to just mirror some of the other functionality elsewhere to that of the Macro systems.