Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AutoHotkey v2 Official Release Announcement

autohotkey.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 153 posts

Re: AutoHotkey v2 Official Release Announcement

#121

Post by irthomasthomas »

IceWreck wrote: post #109
irthomasthomas wrote: post #99

Autohotkey is the only windows thing I miss on Linux. And it seems impossible to even discuss desktop automation with contemporary Linux DE people, they just glaze over. "Like, why would you want apps to be able to control other apps, that sounds dangerous! We definitely want to protect you from that in Wayland.... Oh, what's that? You are a large consultancy that uses time tracking apps to help with billable hours?…

Its possible - atleast on xorg, but why not write scripts in your favourite language to do the same automation instead of using a third party app ?

I think it makes a big difference having something that is domain focused. I remember being new to it, I'd open the windows menu > Autohotkey > and it had two things, I think, the manual and Windows Spy. I think that manual is one of the best I've read and easily made up for the jankyness of the syntax. And the manual instructs you to open windows spy and click anywhere on a window that you are interested in and it tells you everything you could possibly need to know to read and interface with any window control. And if you get stuck, they had an awesome forum full of people working on the same types of problems. And of course you could also embed python, c or c# (probably others, too) or you could embed autohotkey scripts in python, and so on. So, while I know that most automation can be done (if using X11) on Linux, the friction is way higher. And it's a shame because when it comes to non-gui automation GNU/Linux kills it.

Re: AutoHotkey v2 Official Release Announcement

#122

Post by WhyNotHugo »

irthomasthomas wrote: post #99

Autohotkey is the only windows thing I miss on Linux. And it seems impossible to even discuss desktop automation with contemporary Linux DE people, they just glaze over. "Like, why would you want apps to be able to control other apps, that sounds dangerous! We definitely want to protect you from that in Wayland.... Oh, what's that? You are a large consultancy that uses time tracking apps to help with billable hours?…

Yeah this is definitely missing on Linux. I do agree with the sentiment that password managers shouldn't use this kind of API (they should use something designed to transfer secrets between processes instead!). But the automation scenario is still perfectly valid. Something like selenium-for-desktop would be superb.

Re: AutoHotkey v2 Official Release Announcement

#123

Post by trippsydrippsy »

doogerdog wrote: post #17
hu3 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maestro is more like a Macro Recorder while AutoHotkey is a programming language for automation. Also AHK community is huge.

Keyboard Maestro is not just a Macro Recorder. It can control most of the Mac interface and most applications. You can start using it as a recorder but when you learn to to incorporate applescripts and other tricks, it can manipulate the entire Mac experience. I would be lost without it.

[dead]

Re: AutoHotkey v2 Official Release Announcement

#124

Post by 2Gkashmiri »

jdrek1 wrote: post #86
2Gkashmiri wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coming from an ahk user circa 2010, I have never been able to wrap my head around pythons insistence on indentation. Ahk let's me type whatever however and it just works.

Honest question, why? If you properly format your code then it's indented anyway so Python is basically just replacing `{` with `:` and then not having a `}`. Python is the least problematic of all the languages enforcing some style things. Go insisting on Google's stupid styleguide is just dumb, Lisp having the parentheses on the wrong positions and ignoring the fact that there is more than one bracket type availabl…

as i said, i am not a dev so i never learned "convention"....

AHK let me scrap whatever script from internet or i could come up, throw them in notepad and it would work.... now, python makes you "properly indent" which coming from AHK makes my head explode

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...

this is a good example. AHK would read this normally but no, python sees whitespace and wants to "use that"....

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...

this would never happen on AHK so it makes me mad.

part of the reason why i have never gotten hold of python while i can whip up an AHK script in my mind

Re: AutoHotkey v2 Official Release Announcement

#125

Post by irthomasthomas »

phil294 wrote: post #116
irthomasthomas wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many thanks. How do they compare with autokey? I haven't tried it properly, but it gets mentioned a lot. https://github.com/autokey/autokey

I haven't used AutoKey personally, but it's quite capable and generally "just" a Python library that also happens to ship with its own optional editor ( https://autokey.github.io/autokey/_images/AutoKey_Scripting.... ). Keysharp / AHK_X11 on the other hand ship their own runtimes that will be / are compatible with the actual programming language AutoHotkey v2 / v1 and thus cannot be used in conjunction with other lan…

AHH that's very interesting and useful. I'll definitely check them out.

Re: AutoHotkey v2 Official Release Announcement

#126

Post by bsnnkv »

diarrhea wrote: post #67
bsnnkv wrote: post #19

I ended up using AHK for komorebi[1] because I was still new to Windows when I started writing it and I didn't wanna have to write a tiling window manager AND a hotkey daemon. I even ended up generating a nice little AHK library to wrap around CLI commands that sent socket messages to the window manager to make it easier to write a configuration. Ultimately the syntax changes make it impossible to fully reproduce the…

Thanks for creating komorebi. I had tried to set it up a while ago but had to give up. Configuration was a bit arcane! I wonder if other TWM are like that as well. I just wanted to upgrade from PowerToy’s zone manager, but the step from that to komorebi was very steep. Maybe one day there’s a more idiot-proof approach to komorebi! ;)

I'll start working on a full setup video to post on YouTube once I have finished packaging and getting whkd onto the common package managers! Keep an eye out in the next month or so.

Re: AutoHotkey v2 Official Release Announcement

#127

Post by phil294 »

majkinetor wrote: post #118
irthomasthomas wrote: post #99

Autohotkey is the only windows thing I miss on Linux. And it seems impossible to even discuss desktop automation with contemporary Linux DE people, they just glaze over. "Like, why would you want apps to be able to control other apps, that sounds dangerous! We definitely want to protect you from that in Wayland.... Oh, what's that? You are a large consultancy that uses time tracking apps to help with billable hours?…

I miss everything search engine too. Nothing similar exists. Was missing total commander but now that is solved with double commander.

Have you checked fsearch? https://github.com/cboxdoerfer/fsearch It got very good in the last 1-2 years and while ext4 fs don't support a file index like NTFS does, fsearch is still very fast, caches its results, offers similar features etc.

Re: AutoHotkey v2 Official Release Announcement

#128

Post by SeriousM »

LecroJS wrote: post #97
SeriousM wrote: post #91

I see here are the masters of ahk! Is there a smart way to mark/record from a specific moment till "done" and just reply it 1/n times? I tried many macro tools but none of them was "just easy" to use.

Can you expand on “from a specific moment till done” and possibly provide an example? What’s the exit condition? Time? A ui change? Seems like you could write a do_macro function and bind a key to loop it till “done” but I may be misunderstanding

Oh yes of course, thanks for the follow up! I work in many different applications therefore I can't create fixed automations for the major part, but many times I come across tasks I need to do N times with ui elements always on the same spot. Think of it like the very same website but in a different context (build, commit, server, ...). I want to start a macro recording, do my stuff and stop the recording, then start the playback N times like shift-F11-13 where 13 is the number of loops. All that should be ui hidden and always be on the watch for my keystrokes to start recording/playback.

Re: AutoHotkey v2 Official Release Announcement

#129

Post by trynewideas »

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #112
irthomasthomas wrote: post #99

Autohotkey is the only windows thing I miss on Linux. And it seems impossible to even discuss desktop automation with contemporary Linux DE people, they just glaze over. "Like, why would you want apps to be able to control other apps, that sounds dangerous! We definitely want to protect you from that in Wayland.... Oh, what's that? You are a large consultancy that uses time tracking apps to help with billable hours?…

I used AutoHotkey to send keystrokes as media commands to an mpv window (if one is open somewhere in the background -- so I don't have to alt-tab from games) and as those literal keystrokes to the rest of the system. On Linux, I do that with `xdotool`. But that's an X11 thing; on Wayland, yeah, there's probably no `xdotool` replacement yet. :p

ydotool and dotool are subsets of replacements, but for me the missing part on Wayland is getting the cursor position, which is a game of hot potato - Wayland says it's the compositor's job, compositors say it's the app's job, so the capture app has to draw a temporary full-screen overlay to register a cursor position on it.

It's like asking someone "where am I" and them setting off a contraption that drops a bowling ball on some dominoes that launches a parakeet into a blanket covering a street sign to knock it off and show you. It's all very clever and allegedly safer than just saying it out loud, but also stupid.

Re: AutoHotkey v2 Official Release Announcement

#130

Post by Moru »

EvilTerran wrote: post #92
wizerno wrote: post #44

What are some use cases where having AHK scripts would help? On the same note, can anyone share some existing list of scripts and their functions which helped make their lives easier?

Back when I played Minecraft, I wrote one I was pretty pleased with: If you have a stack of items, you can pick up half of them by right-clicking on it, which is very convenient when you're dividing out a stack on the crafting grid to make many copies of a recipe that needs that item in 2 or 4 slots; but for some recipes, you need to put the same item in 3 or 6 slots, and there's no built-in way to divide a stack int…

If I remember right: Last time I played Minecraft you took the whole stack of materials and painted (left drag) over the grid where you want the items. It would share up the stack evenly over all the grid items no matter how many you painted. Very easy to make stairs for example. I think there is an even easier way now but haven't played for a couple of versions.
Post reply on HN