How to program control key combinations only like ^# in AHK?

[kklepper]

On my box with Win 7 64 bit, ^# will turn Speech Recognition on or off. How can this be done with AHK?

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;Send ^#                     ; does not work
;SendPlay ^#                ; does not work
Send ^{LWin}               ; opens the start menu at my box, works with others
SendInput, ^{LWin}       ; opens the start menu at my box, works with others

I guess that AHK waits for some other key in order to react - which does not come. Same as with ^ or # or ! or + alone - it does nothing, which is what is to be expected in these cases, a true reproduction of the corresponding keystrokes.

Or more generally: How to get AHK to send control key combinations no matter what? I don't know of any such combination used in real life, but why not define your own - like +#, !# etc.?

[jpginc]

I don't have speech recognition setup but I think this will work

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run , c:\windows\speech\common\sapisvr.exe -SpeechUX

let me know how it goes

[kklepper]

I don't have speech recognition setup but I think this will work

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run , c:\windows\speech\common\sapisvr.exe -SpeechUX

let me know how it goes

Thank you very much. This command works fine, however it does not solve my problem.

It starts the engine, or rather, as it is started at startup anyway, it shows the annoying little window again -- which I don't want to see at all, whence I minimize this window after startup to the tray icon bar.

From the tray I used to activate and deactivate the engine with mouse clicks, rather tediously, until I found out that I could stop it by speech command (very important if you are disturbed by people entering the room talking to you and expecting you to respond immediately).

Then, via a journalist, I learned about the hotkey ^# which is even better. Combining this with AHK would be perfect.

As showing this WSR window does not change it's status, your command is no solution to my problem. There seem to be no options to this command.

With them a solution might be possible along your path - we would need options to define the status and an option to define the visibility. Googling didn't show anything of interest, however.

[lexikos]

To AutoHotkey, ^# means Ctrl and the hash symbol. # is only a modifier (win key) symbol when it modifies some other key. ^{LWin} is the correct way to send it, and as you said, it works on other boxes. Does manually pressing Ctrl+LWin work on yours?

[kklepper]

To AutoHotkey, ^# means Ctrl and the hash symbol. # is only a modifier (win key) symbol when it modifies some other key. ^{LWin} is the correct way to send it, and as you said, it works on other boxes.

Thank you for the clarification.

Does manually pressing Ctrl+LWin work on yours?

Yes, of course, no problem, otherwise I wouldn't have tried to AutoHotkey it.

[kklepper]

I confess I use classic shell - maybe this is why SendInput, ^{LWin} does not work for me. Uninstalling classic shell for a test seems to be overkill, so let me first ask: could that be?

[kklepper]

Reading the help file, I discovered debugging methods using KeyHistory:

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Pause::
SendInput, ^{LWin}
KeyHistory
return

produced the follwing output

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VK  SC	Type	Up/Dn	Elapsed	Key		Window
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
13  045	 	d	11.33	Pause          	PSPAD-utf8.ahk - SciTE4AutoHotkey
5B  15B	i	d	0.00	LWin           	
5B  15B	i	u	0.00	LWin       

Now this looks like ^ is not sent at all which explains the behaviour (LWin first down -d-, then up -u-). Hey!

Reading further (Special Keys):

NOTE: Some keys do not generate events and thus will not be visible here. If this is the case, you cannot directly make that particular key a hotkey because your keyboard driver or hardware handles it at a level too low for AutoHotkey to access.

This is interesting. I use a very special keyboard, as far as I know the only one with these features, being long out of production (Chicony KB-108), using a special keyboard driver everybody who owns this keyboard is looking for and has to reinstall it on a new machine (like me). Fortunately there was a nice guy who had one and put it online.

KB-108 has keys for ^x, ^c, ^v, which makes it very handy for my work (for example editing this text). When I noticed that it is no longer produced and none other has these features, not even from Chicony, I hunted for them at eBay and own a dozen of them now which should last until my end here on earth.

By the way, none of them ever let me down yet, the first, being in use since about 10 years, has had contact problems with those keys, but they are gone since I have ample spares.

Let's see if this is the cause of my behavior. An interesting hint here is that those hotkeys don't work in Scite4AutoHotkey. I try to force the Ctrl key this way:

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Pause::
SendInput, {Ctrl down}{LWin down}{LWin up}{Ctrl up}
KeyHistory
return

Nope, this produces crap:

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01  000	a	d	3.78	LButton        	D:\data\dl\PSPAD-utf8.ahk - AutoHotkey v1.1.16.05
01  000	a	u	1.15	LButton        	

No way. Another attempt:

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Pause::
;ControlSend, Pause, {Ctrl down}{LWin down}{LWin up}{Ctrl up} ; no way, doesn't work either
SendInput, {Ctrl down}
SendInput, {LWin down}
SendInput, {LWin up}
SendInput, {Ctrl up}
KeyHistory
return

That's it!

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13  045	 	d	1.70	Pause          	Kurznotiz                      ; where I started from to test the Pause key
A2  01D	i	d	0.00	LControl       	
5B  15B	i	d	0.00	LWin           	
5B  15B	i	u	0.00	LWin           	
A2  01D	i	u	0.00	LControl       	

Works brilliantly! Omit history:

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Pause::
SendInput, {Ctrl down}
SendInput, {LWin down}
SendInput, {LWin up}
SendInput, {Ctrl up}
return

Finally! Simple solution! Thank you all!

[kklepper]

When I tried to simplify this by defining a function, I ran into a new problem:

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toggle_wsr() {
SendInput, {Ctrl down}
SendInput, {LWin down}
SendInput, {LWin up}
SendInput, {Ctrl up}
}

Pause::
toggle_wsr()
return

This did not work! It should! Why?

KeyHistory came to the rescue again:

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13  045	 	d	1.42	Pause          	
14  03A	i	d	0.00	CapsLock       	
14  03A	i	u	0.00	CapsLock       	
A2  01D	i	d	0.00	LControl       	
14  03A	i	d	0.00	CapsLock       	
14  03A	i	u	0.00	CapsLock       	
14  03A	i	d	0.00	CapsLock       	
14  03A	i	u	0.00	CapsLock       	
5B  15B	i	d	0.00	LWin           	
14  03A	i	d	0.00	CapsLock       	
14  03A	i	u	0.00	CapsLock       	
14  03A	i	d	0.00	CapsLock       	
14  03A	i	u	0.00	CapsLock       	
5B  15B	i	u	0.00	LWin           	
14  03A	i	d	0.00	CapsLock       	
14  03A	i	u	0.00	CapsLock       	
14  03A	i	d	0.00	CapsLock       	
14  03A	i	u	0.00	CapsLock       	
A2  01D	i	u	0.00	LControl       	
14  03A	i	d	0.00	CapsLock       	
14  03A	i	u	0.00	CapsLock  

Reason for this: I had used CapsLock to easily insert ; for commenting lines out... So make sure CapsLock is Off:

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toggle_wsr() {
SetCapsLockState Off
SendInput, {Ctrl down}
SendInput, {LWin down}
SendInput, {LWin up}
SendInput, {Ctrl up}
}

Works!