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In Praise of AutoHotKey

hillelwayne.com

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Re: In Praise of AutoHotKey

#61

Post by Stratoscope »

One project I did in AutoHotkey is JKLmouse. This is a "mouse keys" program that works on laptop keyboards. I wrote it specifically for ThinkPads, it's not as good on laptops that have clickpads instead of dedicated mouse buttons. (One of these days I will do something about that.)

If you run Windows on a ThinkPad or similar machine, and you ever wished you could have precise pixel-by-pixel mouse movement from the keyboard home row, try it out.

I think it's also a good example of some fairly well-written AutoHotkey code. (Please ignore the messed-up indentation in the SetKeyMap function... Time to add a .editorconfig file!)

I originally wrote JKLmouse as a native Windows app in C using keyboard hooks. But when I saw that I could do the same thing in AutoHotkey it was a big improvement.

https://github.com/geary/jklmouse

https://www.jklmouse.com/

Re: In Praise of AutoHotKey

#62

Post by mateuszf »

dguo wrote: post #17

I've started[1] to do similar things on macOS using Hammerspoon[2]. So far I've set it up to let me: 1. Use shift when pasting something to simulate typing in the text instead, getting around websites that block pasting. 2. Use ";" as a hyper key. By holding it down and pressing another key, I can switch between specific programs without cycling. I can also use hjkl as arrow keys. 3. Automatically switch audio input…

The ; idea is great, I will try it with BetterTouchTool.

Re: In Praise of AutoHotKey

#63

Post by ijustwanttovote »

dguo wrote: post #17

I've started[1] to do similar things on macOS using Hammerspoon[2]. So far I've set it up to let me: 1. Use shift when pasting something to simulate typing in the text instead, getting around websites that block pasting. 2. Use ";" as a hyper key. By holding it down and pressing another key, I can switch between specific programs without cycling. I can also use hjkl as arrow keys. 3. Automatically switch audio input…

I've used Karabiner, BetterTouchTool, and some window management tools. It looks like hammerspoon can replace all of them.

Re: In Praise of AutoHotKey

#65

Post by jimnotgym »

modernerd wrote: post #11

AutoHotKey (in addition to WSL and VS Code) was enough to make me Windows-curious and eventually try a Windows laptop again after 10+ years on Mac. I first found out about AHK via Tom Scott's similar ode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIFE7h3m40U He describes it as “a bodge that helps you make other bodges”, which is beautifully put. [For those outside the UK, a “bodge” is a clumsy hack or repair.]

I saw this video last week and it reminded me of an AHK tool I wrote years ago to work around some ERP flaws, can't really say more.....

The video also reminded me to let some of the young guns in my team into the AHK secret

Re: In Praise of AutoHotKey

#66

Post by johnsoft »

hateful wrote: post #29

I absolutely love AutoHotKey. I've been using it for over 15 years. I used to use it to format my HTML back when i only used a Text Editor (similar to what this link is using for Markdown. I never use my right-control key so I map a lot of stuff to it. I used to have macros on rightctrl+b = surround the selection with and later (yes, it was that long ago). I had some nifty ones with logic for adding s (looking for @…

For #1 (just as an alternative) I've had good luck with this extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/don-t-fuck-wi...

Thankfully I've never had to deal with #2

Re: In Praise of AutoHotKey

#67

Post by f1refly »

winkeltripel wrote: post #52

I'm using ahk to record programming tutorials without a typo. It pastes very slowly, one character at a time and it appears as if a person is typing: https://winkeltriple.tumblr.com/post/177397119146/recording-...

I did this to present how programs works once: Did a medium sized presentation and assembled the program piece by piece, only to have it type it's own source code in the end and run another instance of itself. Confused the hell put of everybody in retrospect, but immensely fun at the time nonetheless :)

Re: In Praise of AutoHotKey

#68

Post by nightowl_games »

I started using AutoHotkey to remap the control groups in Starcraft Brood War.

It was simply too far to reach 6,7,8,9!

Then I used it to make a hotkey to have a popout, always on top, no title bar, browser window. I use that for youtube videos or documentation. Always on top windows + a big monitor are really great for productivity, better than multi monitor imo.

Re: In Praise of AutoHotKey

#69

Post by jakub_g »

One thing I use AHK for:

I bought a logitech trackball, which is great for my RSI, but unfortunately it has no scroll wheel/button, and man, life without scroll wheel and middle click is just impossible!

Luckily, it has 4 buttons apart from the ball, so someone wrote a script to make use of one of those buttons together with the ball to provide the scroll wheel / middle click experience, and posted it on the forums.

Really great that a tool like this exist for this kind of situations.

Re: In Praise of AutoHotKey

#70

Post by questionfor »

dguo wrote: post #17

I've started[1] to do similar things on macOS using Hammerspoon[2]. So far I've set it up to let me: 1. Use shift when pasting something to simulate typing in the text instead, getting around websites that block pasting. 2. Use ";" as a hyper key. By holding it down and pressing another key, I can switch between specific programs without cycling. I can also use hjkl as arrow keys. 3. Automatically switch audio input…

What was wrong with Karabiner Elements?

I am using it and am curious what are the downsides

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