I have conditional macros setup in my PCF for each system and activity based macro via page prompts. Without variable support these page prompts are the only feasible solution. For more details on my PCF you can check out the post found here.

You know even if we did have variable support having prompts for whether or not you want your display included in a given macro would still be useful. When running many of my activites I don't neccesarily want my projector turned on if it is off. Having the prompt come up asking for my preference prior to a given macro running works out great! Of course variable support would allow for asking more specific questions each time you were to run a macro. For instance, say I've just finished watching a movie and decide to hit up my XM Radio activity. With variable support the remote would know at that point the projector is powered on and could specifically ask, "Would you like to keep the projector powered on for this activity?". Now that would be cool. My XM tuner does display the song information via my projector, but I usually prefer to have my projector powered off for this activity.

To implement the example given above without variable support would require I change things up just a bit with my conditional pages. An example of how I would implement this can be seen here. As seen in the screenshot I would change the question on the original conditional page regarding my projector to, "Is the projector currently powered on?" Based on the answer to that question I would have one of the two pages highlighted in blue come up as seen in my screenshot. The first of those would come up after confirming that the projector is powered on, with the second coming up instead if you confirm the projector is powered off. In total the number of page navigations would only be increased by one. Being given the option to turn the projector on or off when switching between activities is actually pretty sweet after testing it out with my XM Radio device. Looks like I'm going to have to implement this for my whole PCF now. :-P Thanks parabol64 for bringing up the subject of conditional macros! I'm soon to have an even more enhanced activity based PCF as an inadvertent result of this thread. :-)

(I've since updated the conditional macros in my PCF as talked about above. To read futher details on this update and to download my PCF just hit up the link in my signature area below.)