AutoHotkey Community

[JDN]

Hello,

I have uploaded three archive files to www.AutoHotkey.net. They contain some utilities and resources that I hope users of AutoHotkey will find useful. The three archive files are:

1) HKD.ZIP - contains the utility HOT KEY DETECTIVE written by Mr. Gregory A. Wolking. It contains a file named HKD.TXT (written by Mr. Wolking) that describes the program. There is also a file named README.TXT (written by me) which contains some info describing the contents of the archive file - HKD.ZIP. Here is a brief description of HOT KEY DETECTIVE.

The utility HOT KEY DETECTIVE is quite useful. It searches and reports on all hotkeys defined in (or under) the Desktop and Start menus. In addition, it reports their associated shortcuts. Installation programs sometimes define hotkeys by creating (.LNK) files that point to their software. But then, for some reason I've never understood, they make those files HIDDEN SYSTEM files. That can create a big headache for users because they can't ever find out where those hotkeys are defined.

In addition, people sometimes create hotkeys by specifying the shortcut key in the shortcut menu for some icon on the desktop or start menu. Those hotkeys can very easily be forgotten - which creates a kind of "time bomb" for the user. They don't know its name - They don't know where it is located - And they can't even see it. So, one day, at a much later time, the user may experience that headache because some hotkey was once defined a long time ago. A good Hotkey Reporting program can be a real lifesaver in those cases.


2) JDNHR.ZIP - contains HOTKEY REPORTER - a Hotkey Reporting program I once wrote. It operates quite differently than HOT KEY DETECTIVE. It reports all the hotkeys currently defined to your system - not just the ones on or under the Desktop and Start menus. It does not report the hotkeys' associated shortcuts, but that should not be a problem because there are only two ways people can define a hotkey. One is by creating a shortcut on or under the Desktop or Start Menu folders and then assigning a hotkey to that shortcut. The other is by using a Hotkey Manager. Mr. Wolking's program HOTKEY DETECTIVE handles the first situation. My program HOTKEY REPORTER covers the second because if you have defined a hotkey using a Hotkey Manager and it is still active, then I would presume all you have to do is look into the Hotkey Manager to see what hotkeys it has defined.


3) JDNHK.ZIP - contains the user manual for a now-defunct Hotkey manager I once wrote called JDN Hotkeys. The program itself was never as good as AutoHotkey and I was never able to give it the level of support it required to become a stable bug-free product. But, the manual contains some tutorials and demos that contain examples of advanced hotkey usage.

The archive file also contains some small text files that discuss advanced hotkey usage (adv.txt) and Abbreviation Expansion (abbexp.txt).

I have written some posts concerning Advanced Hotkey usage in the General Chat forum. Please feel free to take a look. If you are interested in some of the topics you see there, you may want to download the archive file JDNHK.ZIP and take a look at the demos. I hope to write some examples describing how to use AutoHotkey to do some of the same kinds of advanced usage that are described in the demos. If any of you are interested in participating, I would invite you to send me a message and I'm sure we could arrange something.

Here is a link to the posts I made about advanced hotkey usage: http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=25980


And here are the three links to the three archive files I described above. You are welcome to download them all and see if they can be useful to you.


1) HOTKEY DETECTIVE - http://www.autohotkey.net/~JDN/PD/HKD.ZIP

2) HOTKEY REPORTER - http://www.autohotkey.net/~JDN/PD/JDNHR.ZIP

3) DEMOS and SUPPORT DOCS - http://www.autohotkey.net/~JDN/PD/JDNHK.ZIP

Many thanks to Titan and engunneer. They both helped me enormously to make those files available to all the members of this forum. I very much appreciate their help.

Here is a link to my complete list of Favorite Freeware:

http://www.autohotkey.net/~JDN/PD/FREEWARE.HTM
.

[PhiLho]

Ah! If the hotkey reporter works as advertised, it will make my day! I have "inherited" a computer which "block" Ctrl+F3 which I use a lot in SciTE (search current word) and I would like to find the culprit.

Many thanks for these utilities!

PS.: I was logged out again after a few minutes on the forum. This behavior is really annoying, even more as I loose thus all "unread" flags...
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vPhiLho := RegExReplace("Philippe Lhoste", "^(\w{3})\w*\s+\b(\w{3})\w*$", "$1$2")

[JDN]

I am confident that we should be able to resolve your problem with CTRL+F3.

There are seven keys which are reserved by Explorer and you just cannot use them as hotkeys. But CTRL+F3 is not a one of them. When I first installed XP on my system, there were 16 keys that were reserved and I could not define as hotkeys.

Nine were reserved by Windows, but I was able to release them by setting the NOWINKEYS variable in the Registry. Those nine keys are: W-B, W-D, W-E, W-F, W-M, W-R, W-F01, W-TAB, W-Pause. Once I set the value of NOWINKEYS in the Registry, I was able to use those 9 keys without any problem.

In addition, seven hotkeys were reserved by Explorer but I have never found a way to free them. They are: F12 S-F12 C-ESC AC-DEL CS-ESC W-L W-U.

If anyone knows how to release those seven hotkeys or if anyone ever discovers how to do it, I would very much appreciate learning how to do it.

Once you set NOWINKEYS to 1, you should be able to use any key as a hotkey except for the above seven keys.

Below is the full registry key that contains NOWINKEYS. Set it to 1 and you will free the nine hotkeys:W-B, W-D, W-E, W-F, W-M, W-R, W-F01, W-TAB, W-Pause

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\NoWinKeys REG_DWORD 1

In order to set the NOWINKEYS variable, you can run the REGEDIT app. Just cick START and then type REGEDIT into the run box. Hit ENTER, and you sould be on your way.

P.S. It sounds to me like you should try the HOTKEY DETECTIVE program first to find out who is reserving CTRL+F3. If that doesn't help you, then try the HOTKEY REPORTER program. Between using the two of these programs, and then using the DIR, ATTRIB and DELETE commands, I am confident you should be able to resolve your problem. Please let us know how it works out for you?

[engunneer]

PhiLho,

I'm not sure why you (and a few others) keep getting logged out. I have not seen the problem. As far as losing "unread" flags, ther eis "revert to previous visit" on the forum index, which I have used if I don't read all new posts on one computer, and still want to read them on the other. It will often mark too many as unread, but I don't mind so much.

I hope you get it sorted out. We miss you here, and there are a few questions in the ask for regex help thread that I hope you can answer (one is mine )

Also, you and Chris are the only ones I have not caught up to in posting. I had especially noticed your number not increasing.
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Unless otherwise noted, all code is untested.
Common Answers: 1.(Loops, Viruses, etc.) 2. Search 3.RTFM

[JDN]

I have uploaded two more utility programs to AutoHotkey.net. They are very similar but produce somewhat different outputs. I uploaded them because of a thread that was related to these utilities. Here is that thread:

http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=26020

I posted a note in that thread to explain about the two utilities but figured I should also post a note here because I assume that any new utilities made available to the AutoHotkey.net should be documented here in this forum.

They are both called WORD COUNT because they count all the words in a text file. They both input a text file and count all the unique words in that document. Then they output a report showing all the words in the text file together with a count of how many keystrokes were required to produce each word. That is only a general idea of how they work. See the files README.TXT to see exactly how they each work.

1) The first progam is called WC.EXE (Word Count) and was written by Branko Radovanovic of CROATIA

WORD COUNT - http://www.autohotkey.net/~JDN/PD/WORDCOUNT.ZIP

2) I wrote the second program and it has a more extensive output report. It's called JDNWC.

JDN WORD COUNT - http://www.autohotkey.net/~JDN/PD/JDNWC.ZIP

The first program allows the user to enter some options so as to produce differently formatted reports (sorted alphabetically, sorted by word frequency, sorted by length of word, etc.)

[PhiLho]

[Ville]

Hot Key Detective and especially Hotkey Reporter are very handy utilities! Thanks for making them available! One thing that would make Hotkey Reporter exceptionally useful is if it could report what entity has registered each hot key. I realize you mention in the software's output that it would be quite a lot of work. But... as far as I can tell, no such utility exists at the moment (perhaps for a reason ). Oftentimes on a system with lots of software installed it's rather difficult to find what software holds the registration for a specific hotkey when the resultant action either doesn't work correctly (while the key is still registered), or the produced action is ambiguous in such way that it doesn't point to any specific software.

[peterlo]

I have just unzipped this program to a suitable file, read the instructions, created a desktop shortcut to the .exe file & attempted by several means to run the program. All files appear to be present, & very briefly I see the black Command Window flash open, then nothing that's it.
Using the run Command merely reports that the file location is unknown. A direct double click on the .exe file, or "Open" command as I say flashes the black window for micro-seconds.
Anyone any idea what's wrong?
XP Pro+SP2.
Pete