AutoHotkey Community

[TotalBalance]

On Screen Affirmations/Quotes Display

Background:
As an ongoing effort to get my non-conscious mind (aka sub-conscious mind although I don't believe there's anything "sub" about it) on the same page as my conscious one, I've always liked having inspirational affirmations/quotes display on my PC screen while working.
Ergo, my efforts to write an On Screen Affirmations ahk script.

Credits:
As an AHK noob, many thanks to this forum, its very helpful members, and others great scripts to get this script where it is. If you wrote any of the code I've hacked together, THANK YOU and please let me know so I can give credit in the readme.txt.

Special thanks to Predated, ahklerner, engunneer and DerRaphael for their expert help to get the script to it's present state. During this effort, they really helped me learn a lot about AHK programming.

Objective:
Create a GUI to randomly display affirmations on screen (OSD), pulled from a delimited text file. Provide user with preference options, via icon tray.
Preferences include:
* Affirmation/Quote File Selection
* Time between display of new random affirmation
* Text Color
* Background Color
* Text Size
* Transparecy (on/off)
* Always on Top (on/off)
* Hide/Show
* Tooltip with ahk and affirmation text file name.

Other Stuff:
* Whether transparency is On/Off, display GUI without caption/border.
* Allow user to move borderless GUI and save xpos/ypos in ini preferences file.

ToDo:

Issues:
* Text Size - GUI needs to auto-size for this feature to work properly, regardless of font size and length of affirmation/quote. Presently hard coded to only handle up to Font size = 20 for two to three lines of text. For now, user must manually modify ahk code to handle larger font size and text length.
Status - Not implemented. There advise in this topic how to implemented, not sure I have the expertise to work it out. Any help always welcome!

Feature Requests
* A new menu item to append to the current selected file the content of the clipboard. This way, if you find a quote you like somewhere (website or whatever), you could easily add it to currently selected file.
Status - Not implemented. My thought on this is to write a separate script or use another app. (i.e. Evernote) to capture affirmations/quotes and allow user to manually add where appropriate to affirmations.txt file. Other ideas how it should be implemented alway welcome!

Completed
Recommended by Andreone:
* Use majekinor's [module] CmnDlg 4.0 - Common Dialogs for StdLib for font and background color picker.
- Status - Implemented in Alpha v.0.20
* Use majekinor's [module] CmnDlg 4.0 for font parameters (font type, style & color)
- Status - Implemented in Alpha v.0.20

Take a look at the code and thanks in advance for any coding help and/or enhancement suggestions.

Code:
Note: without Icon or affirmations.txt files (need to be stored in ...ScriptDir\resources\ folder). For complete package, go to "File Download" at bottom of page.

Affirmations.ahk - v.1.00 Beta

[ahklerner]

This is nice. Good job. Please consider getting an autohotkey.net account to host your files for the forum.
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ʞɔпɟ əɥʇ ʇɐɥʍ

[TotalBalance]

Thanks ahklerner, a compliment from you means a LOT! Couldn't have pulled this one of without your help.

I thought about creating an autohotkey.net account. Help me out here.

I use DivShare because it allows unlimited uploads of almost any file type and up to 200M per upload. Like autohotkey.net it's free. I use it for much more than just AHK scripts.

If the AHK script sharing defatco is to upload to autohotkey.net, I'll do so in support of a great app. and AHK experts like you. It just means some additional overhead on my part to make sure everything is synced between different upload sites. Is this what you recommend?
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Lars

[ahklerner]

It is completely your preference. I do not know how that particular site works, but the ones I have seen will delete the files if it has not been downloaded within a certain period of time. It just sucks to search for however long and find something you are really interested in and 'poof' the file is not there. Some people are unaware that Titan offers to host the files for the forum. That was the main reason I said anything.
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ʞɔпɟ əɥʇ ʇɐɥʍ

[TotalBalance]

Understood. Thanks for the comments.

One of the primary reasons I use DivShare (besides those mentioned above) is it also has some nice extensions that allow me to easily link Wordpress and Facebook posts/entries to referenced files.

Regardless, I've just uploaded zipped file to autohotkey.net and will do so for all future scripts (might need a little help "certifying" they're worthy of public consumption )

I'll update this post with link shortly.
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Lars

[pockinator]

TotalBalance, thanks so much for this! I have been looking for something like this for a long time. I've always wanted to create something like this but my programming skills are less than amateur.

Here's a quick note: I've noticed that when Transparency is set to "On", the selected background color still shows through as sort of a very thin border around each letter of the text. I have posted a screenshot for a better idea of what's going on. This occurs regardless of what the text color and the background color are set to. Here I have the text color set to lime, the background is set to red, and transparent is set to on.



Is there a setting that I may have overlooked in changing? That's very possible.

Thanks for all your help and for a fantastic script!

[pockinator]

I was playing around with changing the font in the script and noticed a tiny syntax error that wouldn't allow the font to be adjusted.

The line that contains this:

[TotalBalance]

Hi pockinator,

Thanks for your kind words. Really the credit should go to this forum and a few members listed above for some great script examples & help to work from.

Looking at your screenshot, replicating a Red background/Green Text Color - correct?, increase text size, etc. I can't replicate your issue.

It makes me wonder if the issue is display driver related? That's just a guess.

Is anyone else experiencing what pockinator's screenshot shows? Any ideas from others more knowledgeable than me on how to help troubleshoot or modify the code to fix?
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Lars

[TotalBalance]

[engunneer]

pockinator,

I think your problem is that you have ClearType (Anti-Aliasing) turned on, which make softer edges to fonts, but also causes that side effect (because the background color is modified slightly to make the smooth font). The modified background now no longer matches the transparency color, so is not hidden.
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Unless otherwise noted, all code is untested.
Common Answers: 1.(Loops, Viruses, etc.) 2. Search 3.RTFM

[pockinator]

[engunneer]

I'm not sure. I think it's a system wide setting. There was a recent article on lifehacker telling you how to turn it on and off. I didn't read closely enough to notice if they mentioned a way to make it program specific.
_________________
Unless otherwise noted, all code is untested.
Common Answers: 1.(Loops, Viruses, etc.) 2. Search 3.RTFM

[Andreone]

Original idea Nice.

As you requested, here's some ideas:
- why limit the color choices? You could use majekinor's [module] CmnDlg 4.0 - Common Dialogs for StdLib and use the standard color picker.
- same thing about the font parameters (font type & size)
- a new menu item to append to the current selected file the content of the clipboard. This way, if you find a quote you like somewhere (website or whatever), you could easily add it to your favorite ones.

That's all I see for now.
Thanks

[TotalBalance]

[Andreone]