UMPITYGRUMPITY.COM!

Sunday, September 28, 2008

I have created an initial working set of code and file/folder structure that allows for including separate AHK files within a folder. There are a couple of caveats to this method and it brings to mind that I should investigate goals for making the app UNOBTRUSIVE to the scriptlets, and making each scriptlet unobtrusive to the others that are loaded.

Caveat #1: Including files this way makes all included scriptlets part of one another, and potentially breaks some.

In my tests, I have two test scripts included, a Disable Win Key scriptlet, and a Hello World scriptlet. Both run something when a hotkey is pressed. The problem is that the Disable Win Key scriptlet’s hotkey performs the same as the other scriptlet’s hotkey… saying “Hello World” in a message box. This is due to the way hotkeys in AHK can be layered and tied together. The script contains only one line: LWin::

With this open-endedness we find that instead of LWin doing nothing, it finds the next available code to execute, which by order of inclusion, is the Hello World scriptlet.

This is a problem for the app as it will nullify the benefits of the main goal here.

Caveat #2: This method of scriptlet inclusion does not apparently allow for UN-inclusion for the included scripts. The most useful way would allow for un-inclusion, but a work-around is available…just not as elegant as this.

The work-around would be to rewrite the scriptlet includes file, and restart the app. All unwanted scriptlets would be unloaded from memory and only the wanted ones would be left, albeit restarted, which may not be what some would want.

Proposed goal: To find a way to include each scriptlet in it’s own process, and then that way we know how to start, restart, and kill the processes. Then you should have true and complete Unobtrusiveness. However this may bring another caveat. The downside may be that we lose the ability to narrow down all separate sets of AHK resources to just one. More research is needed.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 28th, 2008 at 04.58.03 and is filed under Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.