3 replies to this topic

[daonlyfreez]

Hi all,

Am enjoying AutoHotkey so much, I had to write this down

I was thrilled when I found AutoIt Legacy a couple of years ago, and happy to use it, liking it very much. Soon, more and more little tools emerged, from Larry and others, which extended the possibilites of AutoIt Legacy, but also made working with it more and more 'clumsy'. The limitations of AutoIt Legacy also shone thru.

So, it didn't take long before the question, 'what about releasing the source code' on the AutoIt forums came up, and, to our amazement, that actually quite soon happened... with it came a whole new version, AutoIt 3.

O Jon, hallowed be thy name, who gives us our daily sheer power and effectiveness, and deliveres us from RSI...

(not offending anybody I hope)

AutoIt 3 looked extremely good, I experimented with it, but I just couldn't get used to the simplified VB style syntax. I liked the comma delimited, simple syntax of AutoIt Legacy, and that made me continue scripting with it.

Fortunately, (sorry Jon) with releasing the sourcecode, AutoHotkey came...

Praise be to Chris! Who extends and simplifies our daily work with the mighty tool Jon hath bestowed upon us!

(of course, they are not the only ones, so: Praise be to all coders, who help Jon and Chris in the process)

I'm still exploring the possibilities of AutoHotkey, but looking at the scripts already presented here, and the improvements that are going to be implemented, this is soon going to be a complete free and open:

- Unprecedented powerful scripting language with complete control over Windows OSs system, processes, input and output

- Set of purified and optimized applications/scripts that can replace commonly used softwares/routines, yet are completely configurable. A sort of gnuwin package to the extreme...

Just wanted to express my gratitude (but I guess you already noticed :wink: )

[Chris]

Thanks for the feedback.

The AutoHotkey project began about two years ago because I loved AutoIt v2 but wanted faster, better, and built-in hotkeys. Although AutoHotkey does not use any AutoIt v2 source (I didn't even know its source had been released), it does use AutoIt v3 source for about 34 commands, such as Process and FileCopy. In addition, AutoHotkey includes ahk2exe, which is a modified version of Jon's script compiler. In addition, it includes AutoScriptWriter (the macro recorder) and Window Spy, both of which were written by Larry Keys.

So thanks to Jon, Larry, and the other AutoIt developers for all their innovation, hard work, and generosity.

Edit: Revised the command count to be accurate.

[daonlyfreez]

Ok, I assumed AutoHotkey came into existance after AutoIt 3 was released (the open source I referred to, AutoIt Legacy's code was never released afaik).

So, most code is not from AutoIt 3? Then it impresses me even more what you all accomplished. Great!

Greetings,

[Chris]

So, most code is not from AutoIt 3?

ahk2exe, AutoScriptWriter, and Window Spy are 99% the work of the AutoIt authors Jon and Larry.

On a lines-of-code basis, AutoHotkey.exe is over 95% the work of myself, Aurelian Maga, Gregory F. Hogg, and Joost Mulders. However, without the use of AutoIt v3 source code, the following commands would never have existed or would have taken a lot longer to develop:

Control
ControlClick
ControlFocus
ControlGet
ControlGetFocus
ControlGetPos
ControlGetText
ControlMove
EnvUpdate
FileCopy
FileCopyDir
FileCreateShortcut
FileGetShortcut
FileGetVersion
FileMove
FileMoveDir
FileRecycle
FileRecycleEmpty
FileRemoveDir
FileSelectFolder
IniDelete/Read/Write
MouseMove's incremental cursor movement
PixelGetColor
Process
RegDelete/Read/Write
RunAs
Shutdown
SplashTextOn/Off
URLDownloadToFile