AutoHotkey Community

Chris · Site Admin Joined: 02 Mar 2004 Posts: 10450

Most of us want AutoHotkey to continue to grow in features and usability. However, the project's goals have become too numerous and ambitious for me to manage on my own. By volunteering your time and expertise, you can accelerate development and improve the site's quality. Here are the things most needed:

Script Reviewer: Categorize and/or score the scripts and functions posted in the forum. Publish and maintain the results in the wiki or in some other site. If you're not comfortable scoring the quality/usefulness of each script, just the categorization alone would be a big help. Jon's Catalogue of All Scripts is a great starting point. As Ace_NoOne said, While searching the forums, I often stumble across many highly useful scripts and functions... However, these resources are often hard to find...
Standard Library: Collect scripts and functions for the "standard library", which is planned to be distributed with the program for use with #Include. Work with the original author (if possible) to test and document each function.
Integration with Editors: Maintain the installation scripts for PSPad and other editors so that syntax highlighting and other features continue to work as new versions of each editor are released.
Recommended Editor: Implement strong syntax highlighting and utility integration (such as Intellisense) in a free editor such as SciTE or PSPad. That editor could then become the recommended editor to be mentioned prominently on the site (and possibly distributed with AutoHotkey). It's likely that 80% of users either do not know that syntax highlighting exists for AutoHotkey, or believe it's more complicated than it's worth to install it.
New macro recorder: Create a replacement for AutoScriptWriter that has more capabilities and better multi-language support. There are some ideas in the topic An update for AutoScriptWriter.
Wiki: Participate in the Wiki, such as by creating more tutorials.
C and C++ Developers: Design ideas and code are always welcome, especially ones central to the missions of AutoHotkey (automation, hotkeys, and GUI). For other ideas, see Planned Features.
Other areas: If you have an expertise in another area that would benefit the project or the community, don't hestitate to mention it.

If you wish to volunteer for any of these things, please post here, or e-mail support@autohotkey.com.

toralf · Joined: 31 Jan 2005 Posts: 3842 Location: Bremen, Germany

I will continue to work (if accepted) on:
- Integration with Editors: In my case PSPad. A new version of my install script is coming up. With simpler interface (most options are hidden, but are available).
- Recommended Editor: I still have to finish up the Toolbar, I hope it will become a very useful and easy to customize utility. As for a distro with AHK, I guess we should talk to Jon (author of PSPad). But maybe an install script that downloads the editor and installs it would be sufficient.

And a few notes to the other:
- For the Standard Lib, I might have some functions. But this is not my main focus, and I'm sure otheres are more into these things.
- For the Script Review: I guess it will be hard to manage such a list in this forum or in the wiki. Especially when it comes to rate the scripts.
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Ciao
toralf

PhiLho · Posted: Thu Nov 16, 2006 6:23 pm Post subject:

majkinetor · Joined: 24 May 2006 Posts: 3544 Location: Belgrade

IMO most important should be standard library as it extends ahk functionality.

I think we should create simulation of namespaces and some tutorials of how to write "isolated" scripts. I created one such page at wiki that lives in API namespace. So, when you see missing API_XXX functions in my scripts you know where to go to take it. There should be math, string, web, process and other namespaces released on the wiki

One problem with wiki is that you can't make people download the file but he always need to copy/paste it. It would be nice to change wiki pages or create some template that will extract the code section in given template and offer "save as" dialog with addopted name. For instance, here would be nice to have "save as" button that will offer saving as API_Draw.ahk. I guess this can possible be done via JS, but I am not sure.

I also suggest Wiki to be main working grounds for new scripts and tutorials as cooperation can exist there. Possibly some template can be created for script catalog.
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PhiLho · Posted: Fri Nov 17, 2006 10:19 am Post subject:

I agree, the Wiki is under used, including by me...
No need for special button for downloading. After all, we already copy/paste in the forum, or download code hosted elsewhere, often on AutoHotkey.net.
The only problem with the later solution is that code is then proprietary, ie. cannot be improved by somebody else.
Perhaps Titan can create a public AutoHotkey.net account?
The other problem is that it has to be moderated, some people could abuse it.
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vPhiLho := RegExReplace("Philippe Lhoste", "^(\w{3})\w*\s+\b(\w{3})\w*$", "$1$2")

Thalon · Joined: 12 Jul 2005 Posts: 640

@Scriptwriter
I would have to spend little time to add keyboard-handling (so buttons & keyboard is included). But I will not find the time actually to add support for more controls.
I've set a reminder-termin to me, so I'll post it at the weekend...

Thalon
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majkinetor · Joined: 24 May 2006 Posts: 3544 Location: Belgrade

The problem with copy/paste will become more pronounced as more people are involved.

Imagine this scenario: 20 namespaces exist that are updated frequently by the users. So at any day you would have to download some changed includable script again and save it localy as new scripts might use newer versions of includable scripts. If many scripts are changed frequently you will have to copy/paste every script again very often....

Much better mechanism it use some kinf of automatic updater for "standard library". This can be achieved in following way:

There should be standard in creating wiki pages witch contain includable scripts of standard library. That way, parser script can be created that will update local copy parsing the html page. Simple bounding comment may be enough, or single <pre> section. Regular expressions in AHK can do the rest in easy parser script that will have list of all wiki pages containing standard library and that will save them localy mimicing "file structure" on the wiki.

That can be realtively easy created with no extra effort, just standard needs to be addopted first.
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PhiLho · Posted: Fri Nov 17, 2006 11:40 am Post subject:

There is a risk with such "standard" library on a Wiki: anybody can change it. It is nice, but risky, one can find a function name isn't explicit and change it. Result: all scripts depending on it are broken...
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vPhiLho := RegExReplace("Philippe Lhoste", "^(\w{3})\w*\s+\b(\w{3})\w*$", "$1$2")

majkinetor · Joined: 24 May 2006 Posts: 3544 Location: Belgrade

Well, thats theory, in practice I doubt such things will happen.

Also, I guess there can be some protection mechanism on wiki to prevent such scenario. Library changes can be discussed here then allowed. If library is changed by persoanl initiative not discussed on the forum, we can return back the changes. Library additions are not script breaking but those should also be discussed for the sake of library sophistication and organisation.

After all, wikipedia functions well and yet, the same things you mention apply to it.
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Chris · Site Admin Joined: 02 Mar 2004 Posts: 10450

Thanks for the replies.

JSLover · Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2006 4:19 am Post subject:

Chris · Site Admin Joined: 02 Mar 2004 Posts: 10450

I'm still using metapad just from habit. Thanks for the info about Notepad2.

majkinetor ! · Guest

2 JSLover

Standard library will need to have adequate naming schme. As such, your base library is currently not appropriate. When we adopt some naming scheme you can fix it to obay the rules.

JSLover · Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2006 11:19 am Post subject:

Thalon · Joined: 12 Jul 2005 Posts: 640

I've taken up the ScriptWriter and got good results yesterday evening in a short test. I've to spend some more time on it before posting a new version.

Another idea that came up to my mind last friday was a coordinated translation of the helpfile in other languages.
In the german forum there are a lot of users with english-problems and this takes much time to support.

So I wrote a little tool on sunday that is able to translate a CHM if feed with the correct translation-data and checks differences between help-versions.
The problem at this system is that the data has to be collected at a central place. Maybe it is done via email to a volunteer, but the best solution would be to have a CVS for it Smile

My program does it this way:
1) It extracts the HTM-Files of the CHM (including the needed project file)
2) You enter the parts to translate and the translated sentences into it (saved as associated in a ini-file)
3) Press the "Translate"-Button and it replaces all existing data
4) Recompile a CHM with changed sources

5) If a new version of help is there, just extract it and press the "compare"-button to show the new parts in help-file (this would not be necessessary with CVS).

Or do you have any ideas how to solve this best? AGU will test it (maybe) this week, but the problem exists that all translated data will have to be merged by himself (of course, some merges can be done automatically, but many of them have to be manual).

Should I open a new topic for it?

Thalon
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