AutoHotkey Community

I tried the DateTime GUI control, and I have some suggestions to do :
I used to test it :

and I seen in the help file :

But for my point of vue, I'd like to enter (for example for today's date) : 20050604 rather than 2005{Left}06{Left}04, witch is longer and (at least in my mind) less practical. I think it is very usefull to be able to enter the date in this way for the speed of typing.

And I'd like to be able to enter the date in this way, even if I use :

So without typing the "/" characters
Is it possible to have an option to do that ? I prefer this possibility to the following one :

I read too in the help file :

So I can have a procedure called after each character typed to Send myself the {Left} keys required (in my example after the "5" of 2005 and the "6" of 06.
But to do so, I need to know the actual length of the entry (after each call to the label) to be able to Send the {Left} keys at the appropriate moment.
Perhaps there can be an option to return the length of the entry after every call to the g-label.
Perhaps I didn't understood well and the g-label is called after a valid year, then month, ... are entered, in witch case sending the {Left} keys may be more easy. But I don't like this option as there can be collision (???) between the text typed by the user and the {Left} keys sended by the procedure in the label.
Or may be the procedure must use the BlockInput (on then off) command at the appropriate moment ? But how to determine that appropriate moment ?
Is it possible that this way to do the job may be slowly than the first one ?

I hope to have been enough definite and ... persuasive.

That's not easy to implement because the control's internal behavior is difficult to change (partly due to a lack of documenation about how it works internally).

It's a good idea but for now it's too much complexity. You might consider using three edit controls instead: Each would have a g-label to monitor and validate it. Each would automatially move the caret/focus to the next field when the first field is complete.

As for your second idea, it doesn't seem practical due to the limitations of the control (which is a built-in feature of the OS). But hopefully the edit-control approach described above will work for you.

Thanks Chris for your answer.

Never mind. As I retrieved the beardboy's SetTimer solution for edit controls, I will try it on the DateTime control too.

DateTime and MonthCal are very good improvements of the GUI capabilities.

Thanks again for all the beautifull work that you make.