Howdy %Name%,

AHKCON – World’s first 🅰utoHotkey Conference!

We’re had an amazing time at AHKCon. ⑧ hours of great learnings & conversations❗ We had a great turn-out and received great feedback

You can go here and see the results to the polls & get the chat files.

AHK v1 vs v2 (Panel: Dimitri Geerts, Isaias, Joe)
Various Programming approaches, which to use & when (Panel: Maestrith, Tank, Isaias, Joe)
Objects / COM / Data structure (Lecture: Isaias & GeekDude[helping])
Open discussion / Q&A (lunch)
Regex/String Manipulation (Panel: Isaias, Maestrith, Joe)
IDEs: Which to use, When, Why (Panel: Isaias, Maestrith, Joe)
Data storage approaches (Panel: Isaias, Maestrith, Tank, Joe)
Wrap up / Q&A

Now on with the show…

Sending “special” characters with ⒶⒽⓀ 😁❗

Ever try to send “special” Uniocode characters (Non-ANSI)? Emojis or non-English characters are often problematic to send. Often it’s just that your file is not being saved in UTF-8 format however, for many people, encoding is a confusing topic so we made a simple tool to provide you with AutoHotkey syntax that will work regardless of your file encoding. If you’d like to learn more about file encoding you should check out the webinar lead by Jean Lalonde.

How to send Unicode Characters with a Hotkey❗

Avoiding the coming catastrophe

AutoHotkey v2️ isn’t the default version now but it’s probably going to be pretty soon! If you haven’t started working with it, now is an amazing time to loop over all of your AutoHotkey scripts adding the #Requires directive. We wrote a little tool to make it easy for you!

Avoid the coming catastrophe 💣 and use this script today!

Using all your keys

I have a TON of Hotkeys! So many that I was actually having a hard time coming up with key combinations that weren’t already taken. The other day Isaias and I were talking about looking at the #KeyHistory directive and he was explaining how easy it is to look at the Virtual Key (VC) and Scan Code (SC) to see if AutoHotkey can detect those “odd” keys on your keyboard.

How to map a mystery key to a hotkey | 🗺❓🔑

Pasting plain text

More and more tools allow you to paste plain text however, when you have a program that doesn’t have that option, it’s a life-saver! Most people would open Notepad, paste it, copy, it, and then paste it. This of course is both time consuming and you “lose” the original clipboard. In this video we show how you can tie it to a hotkey, and still have your original formatting!

the Naked Clipboard: Adding a GUI to Paste Plain Text AutoHotkey script

📚 What we’re reading

Social media usage by age
Word Online Has a Great New Feature for Collaboration (similar to Google docs)
How to Get the Windows 10 Start Menu on Windows 11
3 Negotiation Mistakes That Are Hurting Your Deals 🎥
Leila Gharani: New Excel String functions 🎥

⚡️Productivity tips

A clear routine is one commonality that most highly efficient people share. Make sure you have a very regular schedule that you follow as best as you possibly can

🤣 A spot of Humor

The IT crowd – Truest moment about tech support

AHK Hero?

Want more time than the free hour? Have content that you can’t have on YouTube? Consider joining the 🦸‍♀️AHK Hero club! Members receive big discounts to courses, consultations, tutoring, done for you project work, etc.
They also have access to exclusive & pre-released content and a 2nd “office hours” session which isn’t on YouTube.

🗣️ 💭 Quotable quotes

Put systems in place that will allow ordinary people to do extraordinary things
If you want something done, ask the busiest person you know to do it and stand back!
You have just as much time as: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Thomas Jefferson & Einstein. It’s all about prioritizing & staying focused

Live AutoHotkey Support Tomorrow

Don’t forget on Friday’s you can get free AutoHotkey support on my YouTube channel. Or you can sign up for reminders and join the zoom room.

The-Automator

Joe and staff

August 4th, 2022 AutoHotkey Newsletter

Howdy %Name%,

It’s hard to believe but 🅰HKCon is here this Saturday August ❻^th starting at 10 EDT❗

AHKCon is your chance to hear from, and talk with, AHK Experts❗ We have talking points for each topic below however we’re really hoping the event is interactive getting questions from you %name%. If you haven’t signed up yet, you still can by going here. We will be recording the conference but not live streaming. Remember all times are in CDT.
Click here to see your converted time.

10:00am-10:15 – Intro (Joe/Thom)
10:15am-11:00 – AHK v1 vs v2 (Panel: Dimitri Geerts, Isaias, Tank, Joe/Thom)
11:00am-12:00 – Programming approach, which to use & when (Panel: Maestrith, Tank, Isaias, Joe/Thom)
12:00pm-1:00 – Objects / COM / Data structure (Lecture: Isaias & GeekDude[helping])
1:00pm-1:30 – Lunch (Open discussion)
1:30pm-2:30 – Regex/String Manipulation (Performance, simplicity, etc.) (Panel: Isaias , Maestrith, Joe/Thom)
2:30pm-3:00 – IDEs: Which to use, When, Why (Panel: Isaias, Maestrith, Jackie, Joe/Thom)
3:00pm-3:45 – Data storage approaches (Panel: Isaias, Maestrith, Jackie, Tank, Jean, Joe/Thom)
3:45pm-4:00 – Closing (Joe/Thom)
4:00pm-4:30 – Free open talk

We hope you can make it and are looking forward to your questions❗ If you’d like to hear more about
what to expect, you can watch this video

Now on with the show…

Avoiding an 🅰HK Disaster

We suspect we’re getting close to 🅰HK V2️ being the default version of AutoHotkey. If you haven’t developed with V2 yet, now is a wonderful time to add the #Requires directive to “all” of your scripts! V2 is not backwards compatible and will “break” a lot of your scripts. Since they should all be v1.1 right now it’s “easy”. After you start working in V2, it will be much, much harder❗ Watch this video to see what our script does and how to avoid this horrible disaster

Avoid the coming catastrophe 💣 and use this script today!

If you’re wanting to make the switch you might try the V1 ➡ V2 converter which works fairly well on simple scripts that don’t have GUIs

Mapping a Mystery Key

Do you have some extra keys on your keyboard but have no idea what they are / how to use them as a HotKey? In this video explains some things to me that I didn’t know about Virtual keys and Scan Codes (even though I’d worked through this tutorial years ago, Isaias made it much, much easier to understand!

How to map a mystery key to a hotkey | 🗺❓🔑

Pushing suggested changes back to a GIT repository

If you’re like me you’ve probably downloaded a few things from GIT and made some edits but never tried to push-back your changes to the original GIT repository. In this video Isaias shows us it isn’t as complicated as you would think.

How to share changes back to a git repository ☁

If you’re using 🆚Code it is far simper as Isaias had demonstrated in our Webinar on 🆚Code