2022 updates for Autoit

[dinodod]

Guys & Gals,

This is by far my most beloved tool for making solutions that work.  The # of people expanding the capabilities and functions in this tiny little tool is beyond amazing and I hope this continues to grow with more Win 10 & beyond solutions.

With that being said, I feel there are some much needed updates that should be considered to be part of the native Autoit toolkit.  It took these members some time to develop and test these solutions and credit to all of them for their contributions, including those that helped.  "There is no I in TEAM".

With that, I want to know if Autoit & Autoit help will ever natively support high DPI?   It's quite an eyesore now to look at the helpfile on a 4k 50" monitor   While I found several solutions to this, the one that worked for me was a simply 1 line

;High Re support
If @OSVersion = 'WIN_10' Then DllCall("User32.dll", "bool", "SetProcessDpiAwarenessContext" , "HWND", "DPI_AWARENESS_CONTEXT" -2)

Credit:  Shark007 (Link)

In addition, Databases are a staple of most programmers and while SQLITE is a nice DB, what about natively supporting SQL, MySQL, Postgres, Access, etc?  The amazing ADO.UDF, while in Beta at this time, is quite powerful and should be looked at to see if it could be natively included to allow for more options to use other databases.

Credit: mLipok (link)

 

What about any new features / functions to Autoit itself?  3.3.14.5 (16th March, 2018) (Release).  Would love to see a new fresh release with tons more addons and updated tools.  I'm getting worried this is going to become vaporware and lose support, which, let's face it, would be absolutely horrible to all of us.  

Many thanks to everyone who has spent so much of their time supporting this and their fellow programmer / scripters / etc.  
 

Edited January 4, 2022 by dinodod
wrong date

[argumentum]

.. I guess Windows should have done something about the Win32 controls but, didn't ?. In any case the thread you shared there is code to thinker with.
The "native" support would enlarge the stub more than needed. If it can be in a UDF better. Even macros like @Win_10 should not exist as it'd be better to get that from a UDF.

1 hour ago, dinodod said:

I'm getting worried this is going to become vaporware and lose support

I doubt that any of these fears would come true. Also know that enlarging the stub/executable is not gonna happen.

Cheers 
 

[dinodod]

 

21 hours ago, argumentum said:

.. I guess Windows should have done something about the Win32 controls but, didn't ?. In any case the thread you shared there is code to thinker with.
The "native" support would enlarge the stub more than needed. If it can be in a UDF better. Even macros like @Win_10 should not exist as it'd be better to get that from a UDF.

I doubt that any of these fears would come true. Also know that enlarging the stub/executable is not gonna happen.

Cheers 
 

In that case, is there any official UDF database with a help file that can list the more useful / popular ones?

[argumentum]

...it's a work in progress. @Water is working in CHMs to accompany UDFs.
We all share what we can, when we can, and some is added to the next beta if we follow the way is done here at this forum.

As far as standard DB, I tend to code my own ( based on others ) when I need something. I'm not a savvy DB kind of user but there's plenty to try out if you look around.

If someone ( maybe you ), puts together a nice UDF it may become part of the standard distribution if the MVPs decide to do so. Again, I'm not an MVP but I've got fixes and additions to the standard distribution using "the peer review  system"/"forum and trac"/"let's talk about it". Basically participating.

There's also a wiki you can use.

In any case, my point was that the product is not stagnant and future releases are dependent on need ( say, some ugly bug is discovered ) and free time from those that do that aspect.

[dinodod]

Thanks

[markyrocks]

@argumentum you're mvp in my book.  

 The biggest issue that I see, besides how frustrating using autoit can be, as there not being native pointer to reference support.   That seems innocuous but it would solve alot of problems.   Even if they had to add like a keyword (unmanaged region namespace etc) c# style. 

[junkew]

• UDF database
  https://www.autoitscript.com/wiki/User_Defined_Functions
  Just ask in the forum after you searched in the english forum or german forum or ....
• In general there is so much written down in FAQ, Wiki, Forum, Forum rules, CHM Help files that the problem is more:
  How do I search and how can new members find this so they do not have to ask in the forum? 
• @markyrocks can you elaborate on "as there not being native pointer to reference support" are you referring to missing language feature or to how to get support/questions answered?

[markyrocks]

59 minutes ago, junkew said:

•  
• @markyrocks can you elaborate on "as there not being native pointer to reference support" are you referring to missing language feature or to how to get support/questions answered?

I'm basically talking about reading and writing directly to memory without the use of a dllstruct.  in c# you can use pointers directly even though its not usually necessary but sometimes it is and you have to change an option in the editor that allows the use of unmanaged code... or code that gets ignored by the trash collector.  So memory can be dynamically allocated on the heap and it would take autoits memory management out of the loop.  It could be like a mode in the scite that explicitly has to enabled.

We can already use read and write directly by using the win api but currently its impossible to read or write to an autoit variable this way without the use of the struct and just leads to alot of unnecessary copying and moves. not only does it have to be done in the actual script but its also being done behind the scenes in the interpreter and compiler as far as copying and moving.  We already basically have unmanaged code via the dll structs but it needs to become more integrated into the standard variable type.  There should be a implicit conversion between  Struct type and autoit arrays. 

Edited January 5, 2022 by markyrocks

[markyrocks]

O and we also need intellisense or integration into VS

[HurleyShanabarger]

23 minutes ago, markyrocks said:

O and we also need intellisense or integration into VS

 

[markyrocks]

15 hours ago, HurleyShanabarger said:

 

Vscode 👎

[Jos]

8 minutes ago, markyrocks said:

Vscode 👎

You are hardly oppinionated aren't you......

[markyrocks]

1 hour ago, Jos said:

You are hardly oppinionated aren't you......

Lol I can't imagine how anyone who has used vs code and regular visual studio could come to any other conclusion.   There's a huge reason why one is free and the other is the standard for professional development throughout the world. 

[Earthshine]

vscode is nice, even on linux. i can do cross platform dev with it.

 

[markyrocks]

17 minutes ago, Earthshine said:

vscode is nice, even on linux. i can do cross platform dev with it.

 

Whatever floats your boat.  If it works for you great.  I just know that vs code is a pita to get setup and working.   That can be a major turn off to rookie devs.  I just know that VS just works out of the box.  That's all I care about I just want it to work.   Not to mention it has exponentially more features and tools. 

[Jos]

1 hour ago, markyrocks said:

Lol I can't imagine how anyone who has used vs code and regular visual studio could come to any other conclusion.   There's a huge reason why one is free and the other is the standard for professional development throughout the world. 

That's fine for professionals, which for obvious reasons is not the focal group for this website.

I use both the Free version of Visual Studio, for SciTE4AutoIt3 development and other projects I work on as hobbyist,   and use VSCODE together with PlatformIO for development of ESP32/ESP8266 projects and must say that VSCODE is a pretty nice free editor that will do quite well for the majority of our audience.

So maybe you really need to think about what you post before burping your expert opinion in these thread.  

... but hey .... who am I to say all of this as I am indeed a simple hobbyist. 

[markyrocks]

31 minutes ago, Jos said:

 

So maybe you really need to think about what you post before burping your expert opinion in these thread.  

... but hey .... who am I to say all of this as I am indeed a simple hobbyist.

It's not an opinion if everything I said is true.   If it works for you great, what you use in your own time doesn't effect my life so have at it.  As a hobbyist I'd prefer to use the full version.  I'm not sure why everything needs to be an argument on this forum.   It honestly feels like I'm being baited rn.  How dare I disagree...ikr.lol I can tell that this place is devoid of professionals based on the frequent interactions like this.  

[Jos]

I honestly do not care about how you interpret my posts and for sure are't trying to get into a pissing contest with you.
My posts are simply an other opinion to counter your strong opinion ,which in my humble view are pretty "colored".
I leave it to the readers to filter the information that they are interested in.  

over and out

 

[markyrocks]

17 minutes ago, Jos said:

I honestly do not care about how you interpret my posts and for sure are't trying to get into a pissing contest with you.
My posts are simply an other opinion to counter your strong opinion ,which in my humble view are pretty "colored".
I leave it to the readers to filter the information that they are interested in.  

over and out

 

So you need to attack me to express your opinion?.... Im not sure what you mean by my opinions being "colored".  I guess if you don't venture out of this bubble often it may seem that way.   If by being the best for the hobbyist class you mean painful and as frustrating as possibly can be then have at it.  Kinda reminds me of the scite editor. 

[junkew]

Threads like these start now and then on can I get this, this and this and why don't we get a new version of AutoIt.
Anyone can (dis)agree but below is the way it is. If you disagree feel free to look at the alternatives in open source that are around.

Best advice for new feature request(s):

• read carefully:                                     https://www.autoitscript.com/trac/autoit
• Look in TRAC what kind of feature request(s) are fulfilled so you can make up your mind if its usefull to ask for a feature
• raise a feature request in trac:        https://www.autoitscript.com/trac/autoit/newticket

Assumption:

• Core language will not be enhanced with big things
• UDF's potentially enhanced if maintainer is still around
• Most big things first start within the community by someone writing a UDF
  • 98% stays within the community and only small percentage of UDF's is put in core package
     

My "colored opinion" is jetbrains rider 😉 but anyway AutoIt community has chosen for 

1. Scite   (Default, AutoIt team of Developers)
2. ISN AutoIt Studio (Maintained by Community member)
3. All the rest like VS IDE, VS Code, Notepad++,  Jetbrains ..... feel free to add more.
   So a feature request for VS IDE or VS Code will probably never make it from the core developers but has to come from the community members.