Why can't AutoIT do it ?

[Yogi Yang]

I just found out that AutoHotKey which is a hybrid of AutoIT can send UNICODE characters to any target application on any 32Bit Windows OS then why can't AutoIt do that?

[Jon]

I just found out that AutoHotKey which is a hybrid of AutoIT can send UNICODE characters to any target application on any 32Bit Windows OS then why can't AutoIt do that?

It can't send unicode, like AutoIt it is a fully ansi program (apart from a couple of clipboard related unicode funcs I think). Please give an example of something that doesn't work and we'll take a look.

[Jon]

I've found a slight bug in our extended ANSI sending code. We were doing ALT+nnn instead of ALT+0nnn and according to a page on the net:

It is important that all 4 digits (including the leading 0) be typed; typing a 3-digit code will enter characters from the obsolete code page 437

This probably means we are missing out on being able to send a portion of the extended-ansi characters. I still need to you to give me an example though!

Edit: updating the code with this change now, it'll be in the next beta later today

Edit: Beta uploaded to http://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/files/beta/autoit/

Edited January 18, 2005 by Jon

[SvenP]

Yeah, AutoHotKey... how low can such a man go...

This says enough when you look at theirs source code:

Snippets from AutoHotKey's script.cpp:

...

, mIsRestart(false), mIsAutoIt2(false), mErrorStdOut(false)

// Make the mouse fast like AutoIt2, but not quite insta-move. 2 is expected to be more

// reliable than 1 since the AutoIt author said that values less than 2 might cause the

// drag to fail (perhaps just for specific apps, such as games):

...

// Omit AutoHotkey from the window title, like AutoIt3 does for its compiled scripts.

// One reason for this is to reduce backlash if evil-doers create viruses and such

// with the program:

...

// Update: Using V2 gives an compile error so trying V1. Update: Trying sizeof(NOTIFYICONDATA)

// for compatibility with VC++ 6.x. This is also what AutoIt3 uses:

Even their's 'getting started' example contains:

"; QUICK-START TUTORIAL: If you've never used an automation language such\n"

"; as AutoIt, please read the quick-start tutorial in the help file. It\n"

"; will help you begin scripting your own macros and hotkeys right away.\n"

No more comments...

-Sven

[Jon]

This turned out to be an odd misunderstanding and poor documentation of the {ASC} bit of Send.

For future reference AutoIt is an ANSI application and as such reads in the script files in ANSI mode which allows an extended character set of 255 characters (see the appendix for the full list). AutoIt will happily send all the printable characters in that character set, and for keyboards that support it will also use diadic character input where appropriate (that's when you press a "special" key followed by a normal letter to get accented characters, many European languages with the notable exception of English use this method of input so it's nice to be able to support it).

To send UNICODE characters (i.e have a code of greater than 255) you must use the Send("{ASC nnnn}") command and the character's unicode value. The character that the original poster wanted to send was what looked to be a Chinese symbol with the character code 2709 - this is done with Send("{ASC 2709}").

I've made comments about this in the Send function and Send Key notes in the latest helpfile.

[Sorin]

Unicode Input it's not so easy on Windows. The ASC method does not work in most cases because Windows API does not translate any Unicode string in a key stroke (only the ones that can be introduced using current keyboard layout)

If you want to simulate Unicode input you can use the ALT+0xxx method that does work on any keyboard layout. I've wrote an article about this at http://blog.i18n.ro/automation-and-unicode...-under-windows/

[BrettF]

Nice bump of a 3 year old post. As its your first post it come pretty close to spamming...

Please refrain from bumping topics that have no reason to be resurected. A lot has changed since the last few posts...

Cheers,

Brett

[GEOSoft]

Would you believe 4 years old? And you're right, a lot has changed in the intervening 4 years. In fact this whole thread no longer applies.

Edited December 20, 2008 by GEOSoft

[Jon]

He's got a bug open which is partially correct. There was an issue with Autoit sending a leading zero when using the ASC notation and hex numbers. Fixed in next beta.

[GEOSoft]

He's got a bug open which is partially correct. There was an issue with Autoit sending a leading zero when using the ASC notation and hex numbers. Fixed in next beta.

That would explain it. Thanks Jon. I was going to look up what version we were actually using in Jan 05 but I didn't get that far.

[Valik]

This person is getting annoying.

Thread locked.