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Next step up from Autohotkey

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justice:
I like a practical approach of autohotkey, but once I started doing more advanced things such as robust gui apps, I noticed that the community code is a bit underdocumented and fragile. Quickly it seems, one has to deal with DLLCalls, com objects and resort to code such as:

--- Code: Text ---VarSetCapacity( HexClr,14,0 ), SClr := DllCall( "GetSysColor", UInt,DisplayElement )A_Index & 1 ? ( _ := A_LoopField ) : ( %_% := A_LoopField )DllCall( NumGet( NumGet( _ppunk+0 )+4*0 ), UInt,_ppunk, UInt,_pIWEB, UIntP,_ppwb )
.. that to me seems like coding against the limits of the language. However I like the fact that a lot of functionality comes with the language and that you are not dealing with putting dozens of lines of code in place just in order to put a notification up for example.

What do people recommend as the natural next step up from AHK without sacrificing too much of the 'high level programming' attitutde? Or is there nothing out there that is an intermediate step between this and .net for example.

mouser:
It probably depends a little on how windows-centric you are looking for.  One of the .net languages would be a natural thing to try if you want to focus on windows intricacies.   Python might be a natural thing to try if you are interested in going more platform neutral, and are willing to work a little harder to do some of the windows tricks that ahk can help you with.

40hz:
Take a look at this post from Carol Haynes regarding Real Studio if the .Net approach doesn't appeal to you.

Not free ($99 and up depending on version), but there's a 30-day full-feature evaluation download available. And it comes with a 90-day money back guarantee if you later decide not to keep it.

I noodled with the eval and was pretty impressed with it. But I'm also not much of a coder so take anything I say about it with a grain of salt.  :D

mrainey:
You might enjoy working with Creative BASIC - easily develop GUI applications in an interpreted environment, then create standalone executables.  It costs ten bucks.

http://www.ionicwind.com/cbasic.html

MilesAhead:
I don't want to set off a religious war.  AHK and AutoIt3 have the same roots.  I use both.

I find AHK superior in the area of Mouse Hotkeys.  Also you can use the library functions without listing a bunch of include files.

I find AutoIt3 has better scoping.  It's easier to create user libraries of general purpose routines to include in your scripts. Also AutoIt3 string handling is much simpler.  Just double quote strings as in most programming languages.

Often I will code the main app in AutoIt3 and have a helper exe to do the Mouse Hotkey handling in AHK.

For alternatives the big dividing line other than to Window or not to Window is COM support.  FreeBASIC is a free basic compiler that doesn't require run-times.  It produces very small stand-alone 32 bit Windows applications. But the COM support, well, you might as well say there isn't any.  It is easy to call WinAPI functions or other functions in DLLs though.

I guess I'm beating around the bush because there's no way to answer your question without knowing what you want to do.

Mouser is right that if you want platform interoperability then you are better off looking at languages such as Python, Perl, Java, Rexx flavors etc.. and for compiled languages C/C++.

If we are talking Windows only I would try AutoIt3 first. If you can do AHK the AutoIt3 code blocks are much easier to deal with.  There's no "expression mode" where things act one way and non expression mode where stuff acts another way. It's just blocks, functions, loops, select and switch like most procedural languages.  AutoIt3 has native support for objects.  It doesn't have associative arrays but you can get one on XP or later just by using Scripting.Dictionary.

I wrote some wrapper functions to make Scripting.Dictionary easy to use in my AutoIt3 programs.  The compare mode 1 is compare as strings with no case sensitivity as that's the most generally useful for me.



--- ---;use Scripting.Dictionary object for simple associative arrays
Func _AssocArray()
Local $aArray = ObjCreate("Scripting.Dictionary")
If @error Then
Return SetError(1, 0, 0)
EndIf
$aArray.CompareMode = 1
Return $aArray
EndFunc   ;==>_AssocArray

Func _AssocArrayDestroy(ByRef $aArray)
If Not IsObj($aArray) Then
Return False
EndIf
$aArray.RemoveAll()
$aArray = 0
Return True
EndFunc   ;==>_AssocArrayDestroy


Here's one I use frequently to get the hex color code when indexing the color list by the name of the color:


--- ---Func _ColorList()
Local $colorList = _AssocArray()
If @error Then
Return SetError(1, 0, 0)
EndIf
$colorList("AntiqueWhite") = 0xFAEBD7
$colorList("Black") = 0x000000
$colorList("Blue") = 0x0000FF
$colorList("Brown") = 0xA52A2A
$colorList("CadetBlue") = 0x5F9EA0
$colorList("Chocolate") = 0xD2691E
$colorList("Coral") = 0xFF7F50
$colorList("CornflowerBlue") = 0x6495ED
$colorList("DarkBlue") = 0x00008B
$colorList("DarkCyan") = 0x008B8B
$colorList("DodgerBlue") = 0x1E90FF
$colorList("ForestGreen") = 0x228B22
$colorList("Gold") = 0xFFD700
$colorList("Gray") = 0x808080
$colorList("Green") = 0x008000
$colorList("HotPink") = 0xFF69B4
$colorList("LightGreen") = 0x90EE90
$colorList("LightPink") = 0xFFB6C1
$colorList("LightSeaGreen") = 0x20B2AA
$colorList("Lime") = 0x00FF00
$colorList("Magenta") = 0xFF00FF
$colorList("Maroon") = 0xB03060
$colorList("MediumTurquoise") = 0x48D1CC
$colorList("MediumVioletRed") = 0xC71585
$colorList("MistyRose") = 0xFFE4E1
$colorList("Navy") = 0x000080
$colorList("Olive") = 0x808000
$colorList("Orchid") = 0xDA70D6
$colorList("PaleGreen") = 0x98FB98
$colorList("PaleVioletRed") = 0xDB7093
$colorList("Pink") = 0xFFC0CB
$colorList("Plum") = 0xDDA0DD
$colorList("Purple") = 0x800080
$colorList("Red") = 0xFF0000
$colorList("RoyalBlue") = 0x4169E1
$colorList("Sienna") = 0x00A0522D
$colorList("Silver") = 0xC0C0C0
$colorList("SkyBlue") = 0x87CEEB
$colorList("SteelBlue") = 0x004682B4
$colorList("Tan") = 0xD2B48C
$colorList("Teal") = 0x008080
$colorList("Violet") = 0xEE82EE
$colorList("Wheat") = 0xF5DEB3
$colorList("White") = 0xFFFFFF
$colorList("Yellow") = 0xFFFF00
Return $colorList
EndFunc   ;==>_ColorList

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