What does # (hash) mean when it doesn't mean Windows key? - autohotkey

Not sure where to search or how to define the keywords. What is the difference between the following?
#IfWinActive, Some Window Title
IfWinActive, Some Window Title
What is the # doing there? I know that in shortcuts, # stands for Windows key, but surely this has to mean something else.
I had been trying to make up a script and the If-else blocks did not work at all. Finally I figured out that it's because I added the # symbol. But I don't find any documentation regarding this kind of use of the # symbol.

The hash is a totally different command. If you search the index in the autohotkey documentation, you will find an entry for both IfWinActive and #IfWinActive.
[The hash...] Creates context-sensitive hotkeys and hotstrings. Such hotkeys perform
a different action (or none at all) depending on the type of window
that is active or exists.
The #IfWin directives are positional: they affect all hotkeys and
hotstrings physically beneath them in the script. They are also
mutually exclusive; that is, only the most recent one will be in effect.
The # only represents the windows key when you use it as a hotkey assignment designation. In AutoHotkey, any time you see a # at the beginning of a command it has something to do with AutoHotkey directives.
Conclusion:
If you just want regular if-else statemens and don't need to affect the context of hotkeys, then don't use the #.

Related

VSCode Snippet remove rest of tabstop placeholders?

Is there a way when you use a snippet, and the placeholder tabstops come up, to remove the rest of the tabstops once you don't need any more? Basically, for functions or commands that you only need to specify a few parameters and not every param?
For example is this AHK command, I can tabstop to the first two palceholders but I don't need any others? I could use hotkey remove everything to the right but then it'll also remove the ")". So I'm just wondering if I'm missing a hotkey or feature to just remove rest of placeholders.

How to remap Tab key to two dots/period key presses

I want to map two dot/period key presses to Tab key in AutoHotkey script. I tried to map similarly as its shown for remapping semicolon key - on AutoHotkey forums, but it doesn't work. I tried following:
1. `..`::Tab
2. ..::Tab
AutoHotkey gives an error
.
I tried searching on AutoHotkey Remap docs, but couldn't figure it out. The period key is the one with the greater than mark and not the number keypad period key. See this: Dot/period key
Addition info/context in response to reply by user 0x464e:
Basically, I am trying to expand Emmet style abbreviations in devtools style sub-panel since the chrome devtools team wont implement it.
I am not a fast typist, so it's a pain to type complete property names. For example, if I want to type margin-top, (see the image), Chrome autocomplete brings up margin, margin-block margin-block-end etc.
Now, for margin-top, you need to at least type margin-t to get the autocomplete to show that property.
This is the case for many very common CSS properties like margins, paddings, etc., so autocomplete isn't great.
On the other hand, if I just type mt and have Autohotkey expand to margin-top, it's much much faster, saves me much time and keeps me sane.
Basically, I have setup some hotstring in .ahk script and they work too.
However, if I press mt followed by a Tab key press, Chrome's autocomplete takes over and hotstring fails, (try once to see the problem). Instead, currently I press spacebar, or . (period) to trigger the hotstring. It works, but the problem is it leaves a space or a dot with the expanded text. [see this].
So, that's the actual reason I wanted a double period key trigger to replace Tab.
It would be great if the hotstring trigger would work with a double period key, but doesn't leave the trigger character itself and then have send Tab so as to jump to the value input of the just expanded property.
You're not really looking for a traditional remap, which is why you didn't find it from the documentation.
Remapping is just simply remapping one key to another, but you're not trying to do that. You're trying to make some action do another action.
Anyway, what you're asking is doable, but there's loads of different ways it can be achieved with difficulties varying from simple to extremely advanced & complicated.
You'll need to specify things more clearly before this can be answered properly.
Biggest questions that pop into my head right away are at least:
Should this work everywhere, or just in text input fields?
How should the original functionality of . be preserved, if at all.
(What should happen after the initial . keypress?)
Should there be some timeout between the keypresses?
Etc, this is just what I could think of right away, but surely there's more.
Anyway, for now I can give a simple implementation with a hotstring:
:*?:..::{Tab}
So this is a hotstring with the * and ? options.
I'm guessing these would probably be pretty good options for this.
So what this does, is it presses backspace twice and sends a Tab if you type ...
This should be fine for text editors, but it leaves much to be desired (the points I listed above aren't considered since I can't know what you're looking for. This is just what a default simple hotstring can offer).
Looks to me like you don't actually want the additional mapping of .. to Tab, but instead just want to update your existing hotstrings to activate immediately (without waiting for an EndChar) when the hotstring is followed by ..
Normally, you might look to the Ending Characters option to create this functionality, but since you want multiple characters to trigger this, we need to look to other options.
I will be using the example of ::mt::margin-top for my sample implementation. Extend any changes I make to these to the rest of your hotstrings in the script you screenshotted.
Here are the changes I am making to this example:
Add your .. to the end of each of your hotstrings triggers. For example ::mt::margin-top becomes ::mt..::margin-top. However, at this present, this still requires some sort of ending character to be pressed in order to proc. Let's fix that in the next step
Add the Asterisk Modifier to the hotstring. From the docs:
* (asterisk): An ending character (e.g. Space, ., or Enter) is not required to trigger the hotstring.
Final code for ::mt::margin-top example:
:*:mt..::margin-top
And extend this * insertion and .. appendation to each of your hotstrings.
Hope this helped! Lmk if you need any more help or changes.

notepad++ How to assign two macro to same key?

Using the GUI: I assigned a macro to allow me to select the current line my cursor is on. I assigned it to 'ctrl+a', and reassigned 'select all' to 'ctrl+alt+a'. I now want, when I press 'ctrl+a' a second time, to have it highlight the remainder of the paragraph. Currently these commands are available via the following key-press:
Instruction:
1. Home->shift+end --highlights one line
2. Home->shift+end->shift+end -- highlights connected lines
So 1. is assigned to 'ctrl+a', but I'm stuck at this point. How do I assign ctrl+a when hit a second time to highlight the connected lines/paragraph? Details/specifics in layman's terms would be appreciated. Again, I've only been using the gui options, I'm not familiar with the more codey options. Note that it doesn't allow me to use
ctrl+a->shift+end.
I'm not overly familiar with macro and hotkey binding, so I'm unaware if this is a limitation or if there's a workaround, other than writing a program to fix it.
Not a coder, but from what I know of Lua I cameup with:
is_press=false
if btn(ctrl+a) and !is_press then btn(Home->shift+end) is_press=true end
if btn(ctrl+a) and is_press then btn(Home->shift+end->shift+end) is_press=false end
I could assign 2. to ctrl+shift+a, as a separate macro if all else fails.
Short answer, I don't think this is possible with a singe shortcut/macro.
Behind the scenes, Scintilla is doing the selecting. Once you've done the selection, going back to "home" the second time will reset the word wrap extension.

Go up one command instead of one line in IPython 5

IPython 5 is a big release. One of its features is real multi-line editing with prompt_toolkit. The up arrow key now moves to the previous input line instead of the previous input command (block of lines).
This is awesome, but when my previous command spans many lines, and I need to reach the command before that, I find myself wishing I could go up one command at a time. Is there a way to do that? The shortcut ctrlp has the exact same behaviour as the up arrow key, so it does not provide a solution.
On my own Belgian Mac keyboard, fnshift↑ does the job. But I cannot tell whether this also works for other locales.
The PageUp and PageDown keys do exactly what you want without any chorded hotkeys involved; they work on an entry-oriented basis, rather than the arrow keys' line oriented approach.

autohotkey does not exist in current keyboard layout - solution examples

I have written a python script for my co-workers, and then created an autohotkey script to run it every time someone presses Ctrl+LShift+Y. Looks something like this:
^+y::Run helper.py
The python script is fine, but the ahk script doesn't work on all the computers. Sometimes it works fine, and sometimes you get this error:
^+y does not exist in current keyboard layout
Now, searching the web this seems to be a problem with multi-language keyboards (we're using both Hebrew and English), because different languages means a different layouts (I guess?). I also found someone explaining that to solve this you need to use scan codes instead of the usual ^ and + and so on (I'd link to it but I cannot seem to find it now).
This all vaguely makes sense to me on a theoretical level, but when I want to realize it with actual code, I don't really know what to do. To me it seems as if this topic is hardly discussed (with the few exceptions being lacking in examples or hard to understand), so I'd love an answer that would include the following:
some simple way of determining the scan code for a key. This should preferably be a pythonic solution (and just out of curiosity, I'd love to know how to do this with linux as well). This is probably the easier part (but I think is an inherent part of a complete answer).
This is the important part: examples of how you implement that scan code in an autohotkey script, including edge-cases (if there are any).
Question 1
As you want to use the key with autohotkey, it makes sense to use autohotkey detect the key in the first place. Obviously this method works only on windows where autohotkey is running.
Write a Autohotkey script with this line and run it.
#InstallKeybdHook
Press the key you want to examine.
Open the script menu by right clicking the icon of the script in the right lower corner of your screen.
Select OPEN, then from the Menu "View / Key history and script info"
There is a line for each keypress.
First column is the VK (Virtual key) code, next is the scancode.
For example for CAPSLOCK the VK is 14 and the Scancode 03a
Question 2:
#InstallKeybdHook
VK14::
msgbox, you pressed capslock!
return
OR
#InstallKeybdHook
SC03a::
msgbox, you pressed capslock!
return
both work.
Note that you can combine two keys into a hotkey by combining them with & (but not 3)
#InstallKeybdHook
RShift & SC03a::
msgbox, you pressed Rshift capslock!
return
You can modify a Scancode with + and ^
#InstallKeybdHook
^+SC02C::
msgbox, you pressed Ctrl Shift and Y(maybe)!
return
Further info about this is on the page "List of Keys, Mouse Buttons, and Joystick Controls" of the autohotkey help file that comes with the default installation.