115 replies to this topic

[maul.esel]

Hi all,

as some githubbers (Uberi and Frankie ;-)) already have seen, I have a project called "ahkbook" on github since yesterday. It should be a kind of (free) online book for AutoHotkey users, from beginners to advanced users.

Read up on the project, check its current state and learn how to contribute to it.

The planned and already added topics are in the Index.

I would be happy if some people would share their knowledge. Translators are welcome, too, as well as constructive criticism. ;-)

Regards
maul.esel

[Frankie]

Why not use a wiki book?

<!-- m -->http://en.wikibooks.org/<!-- m -->

[maul.esel]

Why not use a wiki book?

[*:3j8bl20o]I didn't know it
[*:3j8bl20o]It's not hosted
[*:3j8bl20o]I like Jekyll, and it will be a lot more difficult to use it with wikibooks (I did never work with a server)
[*:3j8bl20o]not enough control about contents (anyone can edit)
[*:3j8bl20o]We already have a wiki :-PFeel free to correct any of my points ;-)

[TheGreatSwami Woo]

Great idea, I see the helpfile as a sort of manual - in some areas it is too brief or even confusing for the beginner so this is great.

AS I remember as a total beginnner I found the "quick start tutorial" was good but some things confused me like the convention of using the square brackets eg
SoundSetWaveVolume, Percent [, DeviceNumber]

I had never scripted before and was not familiar with this - it would have been better for me if they had never been used.
I dont think it is necessary to write everything as original - why not take some of the good stuff from the manual and hardly change it but take some parts that are very brief and make them more readable - easier to understand.
I found the part on writing values into the registry difficult and remember switching to AutoIt and finding it easier.
Sometimes the examples given are enough and sometimes another example or two would have been better.

[maul.esel]

Great idea, ...
... so this is great.

Thanks

AS I remember as a total beginnner I found the "quick start tutorial" was good but some things confused me like the convention of using the square brackets eg
SoundSetWaveVolume, Percent [, DeviceNumber]

I had never scripted before and was not familiar with this - it would have been better for me if they had never been used.

A post as a "guide to the helpfile" (and maybe a "guide to the forums") would be a good idea IMO. Would you be interested in writing / starting to write (one of) them?

I dont think it is necessary to write everything as original - why not take some of the good stuff from the manual and hardly change it but take some parts that are very brief and make them more readable - easier to understand.

As I pointed out on the start page, this project

...is not intended to replace the excellent AHK help file!

So it's not likely to copy stuff from the help file and improve it. You can do this by posting in Suggestions on documentation improvements or by forking AutoHotkey_L-Docs on github.

I found the part on writing values into the registry difficult and remember switching to AutoIt and finding it easier.

If you understood it in the meantime, you could author a post on it, pointing out some common mistakes?

@all: All in all, I need some more topics for beginners. Tell me the problems you had when starting AHK, or what you have seen often in the AFH forum! The stuff in the index now is all very advanced.

Regards
maul.esel

[nimda]

Traditional vs Expression.

[fragman]

vs Input vs Output variable vs other strange parameters that might be both?

[maul.esel]

Thanks
I added Directives, Commands vs. Functions and the various variable modes to the list + some advanced topics.
I also did some restructuring.

Index

[Frankie]

Jekyll supports CSS... right? If it does let me know, I'd love to make a design for it. (You can make an example of what your looking for in Paint if you like.)

I can also get JavaScript syntax hi-lighting working if GitHub supports it.

[maul.esel]

Jekyll supports CSS... right?

AFAIK it has no "CSS feature" but also doesn't prevent CSS.
I would be very happy if you could look into it, just checkout the current (very basic) CSS. As I currently don't have a special idea, just be creative!

I guess Github would also support JavaScript syntax highlighting, however, Jekyll has built-in support for pygments. I would prefer using that one, although it seems, maybe due to the pygments version Jekyll uses, that syntax highlighting doesn't work for AutoHotkey right now. If we can't get it work, you're welcome to add your highlighting.

As a combination of those two you could of course tweak the CSS file for pygments output (syntax.css) ;-)

Thanks a lot for your help!

Regards
maul.esel

[nimda]

AutoHotkey.dll (AutoHotkey_H) is a custom build of AutoHotkey_L, maintained by HotKeyIt. It can be used from programming languages other than AutoHotkey to provide extra functionality to those languages. It allows multithreading within AutoHotkey, and can be used to run dynamic AHK code, use wildcards in #Includes or dynamic #Includes, or easily exit all threads. There is a COM interface, so it can easily be used from AutoHotkey_L, VBScript, Javascript, etc.

Sound good?

Also the "Expression vs Traditional" link loops back to <!-- m -->http://maul-esel.git...en/Introduction<!-- m -->

Edit: oh, so do many things. I guess that means it's just not written about yet.

[Frankie]

Also the "Expression vs Traditional" link loops back to <!-- m -->http://maul-esel.git...en/Introduction<!-- m -->

He threw a bunch of empty href's in there.

maul.esel, if you have any questions about that pull request, just ask. I'll try to get github pages up and running.

[jaco0646]

Sound good?

I would discourage using the word "easily" because it turns a statement of fact into an opinion. Easily is relative. Other than that, it sounds good to me.

[Frankie]

I got git pages working!! (I would have done it much sooner if we had an index.html.)

Here's the link to my page with all the style info:

brigand - ahkbook

[maul.esel]

@Frankie: Thanks for that pull request, I added a comment.

(I would have done it much sooner if we had an index.html.)

I bet you would have done it much sooner if you had read the readme ;-)
I added an index.markdown now.

@nimda: I added that paragraph + a note about AHK_H v2, thanks!