autopy VS whkd

Reciprocally, it's just amazing how much better AutoHotKey is at scripting the computer is than everything else is. The language was clearly never the reason why AHK persisted.

There's works like AutoPy (https://github.com/autopilot-rs/autopy) and AutoPilot-rs (https://github.com/autopilot-rs/autopilot-rs), but they offer like 1/100th the capabilities AHK does.

Personally I think this kind of computer-control is the perfect environment for teaching computing. Rather than writing apps or webapps, I feel like the idea of just writing code to do what you the user would do anyways, but better, is a fantastic introduction to computing & programming. In my ideal world, we'd have an EVE Online server that specifically re-enables the game-client's python interpretter (and periodically does total wipes), so folks can learn to program by scripting not just their desktop, but a complex & interesting game, via it's rich api.

Autopy, a python library to control mouse and keyboard (I used it to play clicker heroes and automate ascensions, was great. I also used multiple X sessions in Linux so it will run in parallel to other keyboard/mouse sessions) https://github.com/autopilot-rs/autopy

in powertoys, find a feature called “keyboard manager”. if you want to go deep into keymapping in windows, checkout autohotkey and whkd

It was only when I started writing my own sxhkd-inspired hotkey daemon[1] for Windows that I really started to appreciate just how _good_ AHK is. Even just for hotkey binding, AHK does some incredibly clever stuff very transparently to provide for such an excellent end-user experience. For example, using system hooks automatically when the user tries to bind a hotkey combination that is reserved by the system (usually win+something) is implemented so well. Really excellent software and I miss it when I'm using Linux or macOS.

[1]: https://github.com/LGUG2Z/whkd

I ended up using AHK for komorebi[1] because I was still new to Windows when I start writing it and I didn't wanna have to write a tiling window manager AND a hotkey daemon. I even ended up generating a nice little AHK library to wrap around CLI commands that sent socket messages to the window manager to make it easier to write a configuration.

Ultimately the syntax changes make it impossible to fully reproduce the same library for AHKv2, which is being installed by default on all mainstream package managers now.

I ended up biting the bullet and making my own hotkey daemon[2] for use with komorebi based on skhd[3] and I haven't looked back since. This will be the "blessed" hotkey daemon recommended for use in the next release of komorebi.

I'm still using AHK (v1) for the stuff that it's good at (and there is a lot of stuff that it's good at!), but ultimately I've found that it's not the right tool as a hotkey daemon for a socket-based tiling window manager.

[1]: https://github.com/LGUG2Z/komorebi

[2]: https://github.com/LGUG2Z/whkd

[3]: https://github.com/koekeishiya/skhd