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AutoHotKey V2 (Breaking Upgrade)

autohotkey.com

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Re: AutoHotKey V2 (Breaking Upgrade)

#81

Post by geocrasher »

swader999 wrote: post #67

Is it weird that I like Windows only because of AHK?

Whenever I mention why Windows is my OS of choice, one of the very first reasons I list is AHK. I have hundreds of little macros that save me gobs of typing. It works beautifully almost anywhere (Although, NP++ hates it... I wonder if V2 fixes that?)

It'll be a while before I give it a try, because it sounds like I'll have to convert a bunch of stuff- but I'm definitely going to give it a try. I'm just overjoyed that AHK is in active development still! Been using it for well over a decade.

My Favorite Use of AHK

2014. My grandfather was in his mid-80's. He lost dexterity in his hands, and was having a very difficult time because he was clicking both left and right mouse buttons at the same time.

AHK to the rescue! I re-mapped right mouse button to nothing, effectively disabling it. Then, I mapped NumPad+ to the right mouse button. If he needed to right click, he just pointed, pressed NumPad+. Otherwise, he could click both buttons all day long and the computer operated just fine.

He got a few more months use out of that before he passed away, and it remains the most meaningful computer fix of my entire career. I miss that man. A lot.

Re: AutoHotKey V2 (Breaking Upgrade)

#82

Post by EsportToys »

Alupis wrote: post #40
EsportToys wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally use AutoIt a ton as a super fast way to quickly prototype GUIs. It's basically a really simple entrypoint for WinAPI. Shameless plug: my script for emulating a trackball with your keyboard [0], and my tray app for quickly tweaking your cursor speed (usually for when I'm drawing something)[1] There are also some really useful utility apps like WhyNotWin11[2] that's made entirely using AutoIt [0] https://g…

The problem with AutoIt is it's openly hostile community. What community it does have is extremely and openly hostile towards newbies and non-programmers. To the point where browsing their forums has become a huge turn-off, and definitely has rejected folks trying to learn programming and/or AutoIt. Even experienced programmers sometimes ask "dumb" questions... and the hostility they're met with is unacceptable.

Oh, interesting, I wasn’t aware of how the community were, since their documentation is quite thorough and self-contained that I’ve never had the need to check their forums (on top of the language being quite straightforward). I learned entirely from the inline samples provided in every page of their documentation.

Re: AutoHotKey V2 (Breaking Upgrade)

#83

Post by snthpy »

function_seven wrote: post #65
cfiggers wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...holy crap. You just blew my mind. I have HUNDREDS of little AHK hotkeys. I use some of them dozens of times a day. I've been wanting some way to directly target Excel like this for literal years. Thank you!!!

:) I’m kinda both proud and ashamed. I’ve also hated the ergonomics of the formula bar for years, but never tried to do anything about it. I’ll bet I find more weird corner cases with this hot key. My first attempt didn’t handle the autocomplete, and that was a big letdown until I found the workaround. I’m sure I’ll run into something else as well.

Sorry I'm on my phone right now so can't test this out so what does this do exactly?

I just have my formula bar set at 3 lines and F2 edits in the formula box always. I find that works well for me.

What frustrations do you have with the default setup?

Re: AutoHotKey V2 (Breaking Upgrade)

#84

Post by snthpy »

function_seven wrote: post #65
cfiggers wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...holy crap. You just blew my mind. I have HUNDREDS of little AHK hotkeys. I use some of them dozens of times a day. I've been wanting some way to directly target Excel like this for literal years. Thank you!!!

:) I’m kinda both proud and ashamed. I’ve also hated the ergonomics of the formula bar for years, but never tried to do anything about it. I’ll bet I find more weird corner cases with this hot key. My first attempt didn’t handle the autocomplete, and that was a big letdown until I found the workaround. I’m sure I’ll run into something else as well.

Also, are you aware of the new Advanced Formula Environment?

https://youtu.be/yIAl1XbuVzU

Re: AutoHotKey V2 (Breaking Upgrade)

#85

Post by function_seven »

snthpy wrote: post #83
function_seven wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

:) I’m kinda both proud and ashamed. I’ve also hated the ergonomics of the formula bar for years, but never tried to do anything about it. I’ll bet I find more weird corner cases with this hot key. My first attempt didn’t handle the autocomplete, and that was a big letdown until I found the workaround. I’m sure I’ll run into something else as well.

Sorry I'm on my phone right now so can't test this out so what does this do exactly? I just have my formula bar set at 3 lines and F2 edits in the formula box always. I find that works well for me. What frustrations do you have with the default setup?

I like to do multi-line formulas and use indentation as well.

To insert a newline you have to press [Alt]+[Enter]. To indent you can’t use [Tab], so you have to manually space it out.

My script swaps the [Enter] key behavior so regular pressing inserts the newline and Alt+Enter commits the formula. It also converts a Tab press to 4 spaces (rather than focusing away from the bar)

Re: AutoHotKey V2 (Breaking Upgrade)

#86

Post by function_seven »

snthpy wrote: post #84
function_seven wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

:) I’m kinda both proud and ashamed. I’ve also hated the ergonomics of the formula bar for years, but never tried to do anything about it. I’ll bet I find more weird corner cases with this hot key. My first attempt didn’t handle the autocomplete, and that was a big letdown until I found the workaround. I’m sure I’ll run into something else as well.

Also, are you aware of the new Advanced Formula Environment? https://youtu.be/yIAl1XbuVzU

I wasn’t until last week. Pony_Sheared linked me to it

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34178234

I downloaded it but haven’t had a chance to tinker.

Re: AutoHotKey V2 (Breaking Upgrade)

#87

Post by sieabahlpark »

cfiggers wrote: post #60
function_seven wrote: post #10

Somewhat timely. AHK is one of those utilities I absolutely cannot go without. I've been running it on all my Windows machines for 15 years now. Just a few days ago I was complaining¹ about how Excel handles formula input. After some back and forth on my yak-shaving attempt, I realized I could shave it myself with AHK. With this little bit of code, my [Enter] and [Tab] keys work the way I want them to in Excel. This…

...holy crap. You just blew my mind. I have HUNDREDS of little AHK hotkeys. I use some of them dozens of times a day. I've been wanting some way to directly target Excel like this for literal years. Thank you!!!

[dead]

Re: AutoHotKey V2 (Breaking Upgrade)

#88

Post by Aachen »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #58

As everyone says AHK is phenomenal but the scripting language is pretty warty. I wonder if they considered using Lua or something instead of improving their custom language?

I suspect it's similar to why we don't use Lua, Python, or whatever language is considered easy and quick to learn and write as a shell language. There are specialized cases where it's much, much faster to write commands in a custom language (even if it has to be a "proper" (e.g., Turing complete) language and not just some tags like markdown). From my limited use of AHKv1 a decade ago, I would suspect that AHK is such a case. You can get a long way with operator overloading, but having seen students who had decent C++ knowledge use CPLEX, I'm not sure it makes things any less confusing.

Re: AutoHotKey V2 (Breaking Upgrade)

#89

Post by Aachen »

myself248 wrote: post #71
JohnBerea wrote: post #55

I love AutoHotKey but why do I have to learn a new language to use it? Why can't it use an established language like js or python?

It's gone longer without a breaking change than Python, for one...

Let me start by saying that I appreciate the humour here :) However, in actuality...

Python is from 1991. Python 2 (from 2000) was not a breaking change if I'm skimming the "what's new in python 2.0" correctly. Python 2 was supported until 2020 (29 years).

Autohotkey from 2003 (19 years old now).

Unless AHKv1 is still maintained, Python wins by a decade.

Re: AutoHotKey V2 (Breaking Upgrade)

#90

Post by Aachen »

slig wrote: post #7

As someone who has been using Macs since 2006 and recently moved to Windows, I cannot recommend AHK enough.

It's one of the few things I miss from Windows as a Linux user. Some of it can be done using xdotool and other utilities, but nothing works the way AHK does.
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