AutoHotkey Community

[Dewey]

First of all I am new to AutoHotKey so please don't shoot me if you think I am asking the obvious. I have done my share of programming, however it has been several years and I never worked with a microsoft windows environment. Please explain if I am missing something without throwing the for dummies book at me.

Running winlirc and girder on a old windows box that serves as a fileserver/media player/entertainment centre and then some for home purposes I ran into some limitations of the setup and with the installation of a beamer I wanted to make the interface more slick. Although there has been a lot of development since I started to use the setup, somewhere at end of the previous century under windows 98 an later XP prof, non of the exiting solutions like MythTV or MS mediacentre let me use the system the way I was accustomed to without completely hacking it. AutoHotKey was just the thing I needed to make it happen and in no time I have build a smooth running setup without studying the last generation of development tools and libraries for windows, great job, well done and eat this ms powershell.

I tried to figure it out using the manual and forum and although it provided my with an idea where to look it didn’t give me the answer I was looking for.
Here's what happened when using the winlirc script:

The first is more of coincidence then a real problem:
If one compiles the script using it's original name the resulting WinLIRC.exe named process messes up the "Process, Exist, winlirc.exe" call at line 112 by returning the PID of the compiled script. Resulting in the false assumption that the actual winlirc is running even when it's not. Renaming it fixes this of course but if your programming skills are a bit rusty and you have not slept well.....

The second:
When invoking an MsgBox from within the ReceiveData function the script becomes unresponsive to winlirc. Since the code attached in the script to the defined buttons provided by winlirc are invoked from within the ReceiveData function a MsgBox in the code attached to the button results in the same problem. After the ok button is hit the thread continues till the end of the function ("return 1" at line 254) but that's it, no more response to winlirc events. Seeing when en where it happens this probably messes up the messaging. Allowing more threads kind of runs past the problem but creates new ones of its own and tempering with “Critical” didn’t fix it for me. I currently work around the problem by using progress windows however I would like to use an ok button for the errors that might be encountered without sending the script haywire. My limited windows/AutoHotKey skills haven't allowed me to do so yet, any suggestions? and could someone confirm that this is not a local problem? Thnx.

[engunneer]

First:
not much we can do about that as far as AHK goes. I recommend naming your script based on what it does, like winlirc-interface.ahk or something.

Second:
you can use something like Settimer to call a Msgbox that does not block the main thread.

[Dewey]

Thanks, this solutions works for me. One question because I’d like to understand a little bit more about the windows/ahk environment , what’s going wrong without settimer, why does the thread become unresponsive to winlirc when interrupted with a msgbox?

[engunneer]

since I cannot see your script, I cannot comment about why it loses sync with winlirc on msgbox.
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(Common Answers)

[Dewey]

Here’s the script with the problem, it’s basically the winlirc script from autohotkey.com with a few additions. These additions have no effect on the observed msgbox problem, I tested that. Al it needs to run is two icon files defined at line 51 and 52

[Bobo8]

I have same problem. The script is simple - add this 3 lines to WinLirc.ahk script: