Differences from AutoIt3

[cappy2112]

Hi,

I've used AutoIt in the past, and recently stumbled across AuthoHotKey.
It looks like there is some common geneology between the two.
Is any of that documented?
Why the separation between the two projects?
I'm just trying to understand if I should focus on one or the other, or if they both have some different merits.

Thanks

[gregster]

No idea about the actual differences, but at least one important may be that AHK is still open source...
Edit: There is also a dll-version available for AHK. (no idea if there is something like thaT for AutoIt3)

[guest3456]

Hi,

I've used AutoIt in the past, and recently stumbled across AuthoHotKey.
It looks like there is some common geneology between the two.
Is any of that documented?
Why the separation between the two projects?
I'm just trying to understand if I should focus on one or the other, or if they both have some different merits.

Thanks

my understanding:

AutoIt v2 was open source, and AutoHotkey forked off to try to make the syntax easier for non programmers and to focus on the hotkey side of things
AutoIt v3 later went to closed source

I'd guess that most functionality can be done in either scripting language. AHK has certainly taken a more advanced route as of late.. I'm not sure if AutoIT has classes and objects as part of their language

[cappy2112]

No idea about the actual differences, but at least one important may be that AHK is still open source...
Edit: There is also a dll-version available for AHK. (no idea if there is something like thaT for AutoIt3)

yes, there are DLL vor AutoIt, it can also be run via COM.

[Gio]

They share a common "ancestor". That is pretty much all there is to it. The syntax, inbuilt functionalities, available user libraries, community support and the tools available for either language are now very different in my opinion. And that comes as a result of years of separated development.

That is not to say, however, that either AHK or AutoItv3 are superior to each other. Whatever you can do in one, you can probably do in the other. Sometimes you will have a little bit more trouble coding a script with one of them over the other, and that is just because one of them may lack a specific user library that is available for the other or something else. But in the end, you can still write the code of that library yourself and achieve the same result, so overall it is mostly a matter of individual preferences and both languages are very robust.

In example, i have written a library to natively generate QR Codes in AutoHotkey without an external DLL file or a connection to an online service. Since this is code that i (a user) wrote, and there is no counterpart user-written library in the AutoIt community for that, you will probably have to use a third-party DLL file or a connection to an online service in order to accomplish this task using AutoIt if you whant ease of implementation. Using these other options (DLL File, or Online Service) may not be an impeditive in most cases, but sometimes it may be. So if you are an AutoIt user and ever come to find a need to use native code for the task, that will require a little bit more work, but it won't be impossible: just write the code of the library yourself and you will be fine. If you know both languages it may even be easier to "translate" the code and achieve the result in AutoIt, so there may well be an advantage in knowing both languages.

[cappy2112]

They share a common "ancestor".

Thanks.
What is the name of the common ancestor?

[nnnik]

AutoIt2

[cappy2112]

Recommends AHK Studio

Looks nice, I'll try it.

I was wondering if AHK has similar functionality that AutoIt2/3 do- that is tight integration with Scite
and a bunch of Scite Plugins. AutoIt has a nice installer which bundles a lot of extraa goodies, including a version of Scite that works like
a AutoI IDE.

I guess AHK Studio is the answer to that...

[Gio]

I was wondering if AHK has similar functionality that AutoIt2/3 do- that is tight integration with Scite
and a bunch of Scite Plugins.

There is a version of SciTE for AutoHotkey too: https://autohotkey.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=62