AutoHotkey Community

[Laszlo]

This short script sends predefined pieces of text found by the beginnings of their first word.
It is based on the built-in incremental search functionality of ListBoxes, so its features list longer than the script itself.

The text-pieces are delimited by pipe, "|", can contain spaces, special characters.
The last entry has to be "[" for technical reasons.

When the Ctrl-Space HotKey is hit, the script takes the (partial) word left to the insertion point and looks in the user-defined List if there are continuations.
- If there is none, nothing happens, otherwise a ListBox pops up with the first match highlighted.
Usually there is just one match, so keeping the Ctrl key pressed & hitting the space bar again sends the selected text to the current window (the most convenient way, but Enter works, too).

If you keep typing, an incremental search highlights always the first match, while the original window shows the typed text, which is being used to search for the long pieces of text. Here you can type space and other characters, too, which would delimit the initial word.
If there is no more match, the search aborts, leaving the typed search text intact.

Up, Down and Mouse clicks change the selection in the ListBox.
Mouse click on Scroll bar or the mouse wheel scrolls the text.
Double click on an entry in the list box sends that text to the window, erasing the text typed after the last Ctrl-Space.

Ctrl-Space:
1. No abbreviation defined: no effect.
2. There are abbreviations: pop up GUI, first match selected in a ListBox.
-- a. 2nd Ctrl-Space or Enter: Send selected text from List, replace typed text
-- b. Esc or TAB: Return, no text insertion
-- c. Keep typing: Select incremental matches, keys echoed in original window.
---- If there is no more match, exit
-- d. BackSpace:
---- If no more key left since Ctrl-Space, exit
---- Delete keys typed since Ctrl-Space activation, update selection
-- e. Up, Down, Mouse click: change selection
-- f. Double click sends the corresponding text

Limitations:
- Only works in applications using Shift-Ctrl-Left to select the word left of the insertion point
- Ctrl-X/Send to cut/paste might have side effects (change indentation, paragraph format...)
- Changing the active window makes text sent there

ToDo:
- Replace GoTo's with functions, for the purists
- Suspend while other windows are active
- Save/Load list from/to a .ini file
- Dynamically Add/Remove entries from the list
- Movable, resizable GUI
- Save/Load GUI position

[Chris]

Looks great and very well documented. I expect to use it for at least one future script.

[Harrie]

Very beautiful from the end-user's point of view indeed! Great script! Why, how perfect for putting in a whole list of doctor names or the like. Just tried it out by putting several "Dr. So-and-So's in the script. Might change it around and leave the "Dr." out of the script since MS Word wants to see a period as a word. Truly looking forward to experimenting with this jewel.

[Laszlo]

Thanks for the compliments! If all of your abbreviations end with a period or comma, or you always use more than one letter abbreviations, you could modify the script (4th line of the hotkey subroutine) to send +{Left}^+{Left}^x instead. Or, check if the ClipBoard contains a punctuation mark only, and than do this longer selection.

[Guest]

[HugoV]

Dear Jilt,

have a look at Kollektor by Boskoop
http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2534
see screenshots + links almost at the bottom of the first page

or my Kollektor++ adaptation on the second page:
http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/topic2534-15.html
which allows you to manage multiple lists and search multiple lines
of text.

Good luck!

[Jiltdijk]

Dear HugoV,

Thank you for your tip. I've downloaded Kollektor 03, it's indeed very much like the thing I was looking for.
I wonder if it's possible to link the word you find in the list to it's translation(s) and only paste this translation into your document instead of the searched word.
The way I'd use it now for translations is to edit Collection.txt like this

book - boek
table - tafel

insert the entry and remove the source part of it.

Jilt

[HugoV]

Look up the line

[Jiltdijk]

Thanks for the modification.
I definitely want to look into ISense later, but first I'm getting back to my translation assignment and see how this works!

Jilt

[totalmig]

Hi.

Thanks for making this great script, has been really usefull for me.

I just tried using it along with some gui, and that messes it up totally. Whenever i click ctrl + space i changes focus to another window. If i run your script, and then run the gui in another script the it runs just fine. Don't know what i should do to get it working, hope someone is able to point it out.

[HugoV]

You have two guis, but you only define one so to speak. Read up on multiple GUIs http://www.autohotkey.com/docs/commands/Gui.htm#MultiWin

Add a Return below your first GUI, and you may also need to move sections of the script as it will stop after the first Gui (if you add return) and thus will not process the search ...
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