the-🅰utomator Live Support
Channel: AUTOHOTKEY Gurus
Date: 2022-08-05

TLDR: The video provides tips and tricks for using AutoHotkey, including specifying file encoding, using appropriate line endings, and utilizing hotkeys for problem-solving.

1. 00:00 📝 Find a brainstorming partner to help with problem-solving, and remember to destroy child windows before reading data from the main window in AutoHotkey.
 1.1 HK Con is tomorrow and will be recorded but not live streamed on YouTube, with a Zoom meeting available.
 1.2 The speaker attempted to practice annotating on their tablet and mentioned a helpful individual named "work from home hacker" before discussing their frustration with a problem in order hockey.
 1.3 Find someone else to bounce ideas off of, as it can help trigger your brain and lead to problem-solving.
 1.4 The speaker had trouble getting information from the main window due to the tool window being recognized instead, and had to destroy the tool window to read the content off the screen.
 1.5 When dealing with a child window, it is important to destroy it before reading data from the main window.
 1.6 Certain commands in AutoHotkey, such as any read and any write, do not obey the file encoding command, causing issues with file and coding.

2. 16:39 📝 Specify file encoding in utf-8 with a bomb character for Autohotkey scripts and utf-16 for special characters, and use notepad to check or change the encoding of a file.
 2.1 Autohotkey scripts must be in utf-8 with a bomb character for any read to read the files correctly, and if an ini file contains special characters that require unicode encoding, it should be saved as utf-16.
 2.2 File encoding in utf-16 is recommended for special characters, but when using any write command, the existing encoding of the file will be kept.
 2.3 Create a short test to fix the issue of not being able to write to a file programmatically in Windows XP.
 2.4 The lecture discussed encoding in coding and how to specify the encoding of a file using the file and code command, but some commands may ignore this option.
 2.5 To determine the encoding of a file, open it in an editor and check the bottom or use notepad to save the file with the desired encoding.
 2.6 UTF-8 encoding with a BOM (byte order mark) tells the program that it is UTF and is advantageous for languages other than English, but it is not necessary and can be avoided.

3. 27:53 💻 UTF-16 allows for greater encoding of characters, while UTF-8 is smaller and more commonly used on the web, with Windows defaulting to little Indian encoding.
 3.1 The difference between UTF-16 and UTF-8 is that UTF-16 allows for greater encoding of characters, while UTF-8 is smaller and more commonly used on the web.
 3.2 There are two bytes at the beginning of a file that determine the type of encoding, but in general, Windows defaults to little Indian and if you specify encoding 16, it will use the default one and you don't have to worry about it.
 3.3 Using file append with a specific encoding for an ini file and later using any write will not overwrite the selected encoding, but if any write is used on a file that doesn't exist, it will default to the Windows file encoding.
 3.4 Windows has a hidden character that appears every time you hit a new line when saving a file.
 3.5 The lecture is about showing someone they are right and using a specific method to do so.

4. 34:13 💻 Use the appropriate line endings when parsing text and consider using window mode and compiling scripts when using autohotkey for gaming.
 4.1 Windows uses a carriage return and line feed for line endings, while Unix systems use only a line feed character.
 4.2 Ignoring the carriage return when parsing text is important to avoid issues with regular expression matching and file reading.
 4.3 When using regular expressions, it's important to consider the type of new lines in the text and use the appropriate option to match them.


5. 42:08 👨‍💻 The speaker is working on scripts for medical database software, discussing design flaws and proposing solutions, but warns against using their image search on other computers

6. 48:22 🔍 Use pixel get to reliably find a column with a specific color and save the coordinates for automation.

7. 55:38 💻 Buy open box big screen TVs from Best Buy outlet stores for cheap computer monitors, but be prepared to use a remote control and switch to HDMI.

8. 01:04:02 🔑 Use hotkeys to break loops with no control by assigning a command in hockey max threads per hotkey, pressing F2 to flip a variable, and holding down the escape key for three seconds to trigger it.

Consider joining the AHK Hero group.  We stream 3 more hours, privately, on Zoom and have a private chat group.  https://the-Automator.com/AHKHero