SanskritFritz wrote:
i'd like to call all internal functions with parentheses and have return values and I would like to be able to use all strings with quotation marks. Using internal functions in an if statement would be great.
Thanks for your candor. Some of this is planned, at least for the commands that currently accept an OutputVar. Example:
BothAreDown := GetKeyState("Control") and GetKeyState("LWin")
However, other commands such as Sleep and SetTimer will probably stay as they are (since they don't return a value).
Quote:
...ever thought about joining your efforts? I have read a
thread on the AI3 forum
You saw the thread, which pretty well sums it up. To get specific, the lack of a unified product has to do with differing interests. One thing in particular is that Jon did not want a keyboard or mouse hook in AutoIt because it was not compatible with Win9x and also might increase the chances that AutoIt would be flagged as a virus by various virus detectors. In addition, there was initially little interest by the AutoIt developers in having hotkeys in AutoIt. Here is an approximate timeline:
April 21, 2003: Work began on AutoHotkey because I loved AutoIt v2 but also loved hotkeys and was disappointed with the OS's built-in hotkey support.
July 15, 2003: AutoIt v3 beta development is getting into high gear: A new version has just been released that supports user defined functions (UDFs).
Sept 6, 2003: I posted a long proposal to the AutoIt mailing list entitled "Integration of hotkey (shortcut key) support into AutoIt". I expressed my interest in becoming an AutoIt developer who would focus on hotkey support. I also asked for opinions about how difficult it would be to integrate the AutoHotkey concepts and source code with AutoIt, and mentioned the benefits of having a unified product (synergy).
I didn't get much response to my post, and overall the impression was that Jon and most of the other AutoIt developers were not interested in hotkeys at that time. Shortly thereafter, I announced my intent to release a separate product that would focus on hotkey support and AutoIt v2 compatibility.
Nov 10, 2003: First public beta of AutoHotkey.
Jan 8, 2004: Hotkey support is added to AutoIt v3 (3.0.85 beta). The first non-beta version of AutoIt v3 would be released about 7 weeks later.