Talk:AutoIt

code examples

how about code examples??

Code examples in the sense of teaching how to code in AutoIt would not be relevant however one example of a simple program may be 86.147.190.162 20:37, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

--BinaryBrother in reply to 86.147.190.162

Code examples would be as defined... An Example of Code. You can find more discussed Code Examples on the AutoIt Example Forums, but please be warned. As stated by the Forum header on the Example Forum, It is NOT for general support. General Support is reserved for this URL, http://www.autoitscript.com/forum/index.php?showforum=2 .

'frowned upon' comment

I'm not a programmer, but I'd have to say that usage of this program to bot in various games is probably one of the most challenging and elegant uses of the technology possible. Take Diablo 2 for example..Bots can avoid enemies, pick and choose which items to pick up, which to sell and which to keep in the stash, kill bosses or seek out specific types of opponents..etc, the list goes on and on. I understand that using AutoIt in this manner is contrary to the spirit of the game, but the ingenuity needed to even approach solving some problems in games in an automatic fashion beats the crap out of telling the computer to input a certain text sequence in a specific text box after a specific set of conditions is met.

Is this so looked down upon by the community? The author citing sources would be helpful.

-PhPh

I’m a long-time user of AutoIt (both v2 and v3) and I can tell you that historically there have been some major problems with bot uses of AutoIt in the community, particularly on the forums. I have not been active on the forums for a couple of years, but there used to be huge threads by people wanting to edit some AutoIt code they found for botting purposes. Since many of these people were not inclined to learn the language (they just wanted someone to fix it for them without having to put in any work themselves) they put an undue burden on the forums and eventually these posts came to be a source of contention.

I agree with the above comment that the use of automated scripts to perform often-complex tasks that a game demands can be a creative use of the technology. However, from a community perspective (specifically the AutoIt forums), most users of these bots were not the programmers of them nor willing to learn what was necessary to make changes to the code. Very few people programmed the vast majority of the bots the AutoIt forums saw support requests for, and almost no posters were willing to put the effort in to accomplish the tasks they sought help with.

I hope this answers some of your questions.

--Pekster 01:43, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

But the claim is that this use is frowned upon. You only listed reasons why we should dislike the botters not why botting is frowned upon. Also it is worthy of note the annoying often obnixious botters always seem to find help, which implies that some do support their efforts. 72.21.232.44 04:52, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

OO: Not an omission, but by design.

Just thought I would add my understanding, which is that AutoIt is by design not an object-oriented language, which therefore does not use namespaces, classes, dotted notation, etc. -The creators being of the opinion that these features are not appropriate to a scripting language, and that the insistence on an OO syntax is one of the key reasons for other scripting languages being excessively difficult to use.

--Anteaus 20:14, 18 May 2007 (UTC) -Also a user since v2 days ;)

That's fine, although, just to clarify, the issue of OO being left out does still warrant inclusion in the article since that is one feature that users have asked about quite a bit; it is found in some very well-known "scripting languages"; and some would consider it a "limitation" ... despite the fact that it was intentionally designed that way. dr.ef.tymac 21:20, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

--User:Brian R Hunter 00:25, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

As another programmer familiar with AutoIt since v2 and familiar with a wealth of programming languages including many OO, I agree with most of the comment from Anteaus. The 'limitation' however is to my mind a strength as it provides a simple to learn procedural language as an alternative to other overly complex (if elegant) langauges. For any programmer familiar with this type of 'BASIC' syntax, AutoIT is extremely easy to learn and extremely powerful for automation and other programming tasks on Windows. The authors have not only produced a superb product with an exceptional help guide they have given it away for the benefit of all. It compares favourably with many commercial products I have used over the years. Its integration with windows provides an ease of use in producing scripts that I challenge anyone to find an equal (with or without OO features).

I agree that we cannot call the lack of object-oriented constructs a "limitation", unless it can be agreed that object-oriented programming is always better than procedural languages (which, for simple scripting I would argue against). This is like saying a limitation of Photoshop is that it doesn't support 3D modeling. It's simply not meant to.Logan1337 (talk) 02:32, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Limitations

The section on 'Limitations' added by 192.234.223.100 whilst probably true does not seem to sit easily in the encyclopaedia. As with all programming tools there are limitations and restrictions on what it can be used for. Where a feature is 'required' by a user it should be addressed to the authors. Listing every thing a programming tool cannot do is obviously a non-starter. I am unclear as to the useful significance of the 'limitations' mentioned.

I propose removing the section unless there is some justification for keeping it. --Brian R Hunter (talk) 18:04, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

As is, I agree with removal due to questions of OR and POV, but this is not a condemnation of the content. This would be a valid section if it was re-spun as criticism published by a review or other usable source. If another editor cares to find reliable sources that support these statements, they can stay, but no one is obligated to wait. Ham Pastrami (talk) 15:07, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Decided to keep the Limitations section and moved limitations documented in the Features section to an (hopefully) better structured Limitations section. --Brian R Hunter (talk) 01:36, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Mention of this particular limitation (and therefore development risk) is highly encyclopeadic and manifestly useful: I myself commenced developing a pop email notifier only to find this a major stumbling block to the otherwise usefulnees of developing this kind of application in an otherwise great rapid potottyping/programming/scpripting language. No refs as yet but I know they can be found with a google...Mattjs (talk) 06:31, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Peacocky terms

"Vibrant" community? Uncited, that's a bit of a puffery. Perhaps some more neutral terms might be good? ++Lar: t/c 02:21, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Paragraph on "botting" too off-topic

I fail to see how the following paragraph:

Another use of AutoIt is for "botting" in online games. Botting allows the user to run a script which automates some repetitive action in the game - usually so the script user can advance in the game more quickly. Use of AutoIt in this way is frowned upon by some in the AutoIt community as it can generate bad publicity; however, a few botting scripts can still be found in the official AutoIt forums. Because botting is considered to be cheating by most AutoIt users you should not expect much help in the use of AutoIt for this purpose. Many forum members will refuse to help those that are trying to create bots. This is not to say that support will not be provided; however, you may have to wait long periods of time for answers regarding bots.

...is directly relevant to this topic. At most I would think "botting" would be mentioned once as a possible use, and get rid of this garbage. We definitely don't need to describe what botting is here--link to a separate article. Logan1337 (talk) 02:42, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

"used to create malware"?

I think the sentence "It has also been used to create malware." does not makes much sense to me, that's similar to saying "cars made by ford were used in terrorits attacks" or "factories with proper conditions can be used to create nuclear weapons". I think it is better to remove it, anyone against? SF007 (talk) 00:11, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Various Edits and changes to History

My apologies, I did the edits and did not realize that I was not logged in.

Ultimately the people with an interest this article need to be looking towards a rewrite. For example, there were three separate instances in which it was mentioned that AutoIt is a "scripting language with BASIC-like structure". I condensed one of them out of features and put it into the introductory section of the article but the other one in the list still remains. Frankly, the feature list and the usage section will probably need to be combined and the aspects briefly mentioned in the list can be expanded upon, which will give a much better overview of what can be done with AutoIt as the current Usage section downplays the language's capabilities dramatically.

I also think that some code examples and more information about the AutoIt community would also be very helpful in fleshing out this article.

I think three months is enough time for the claims made in the History section to be substantiated, they have been removed and replaced with a neutral sentence stating actual facts regarding source code; being something close to an encyclopedia such claims really have no place in the article anyway.

I also changed the language of the article regarding botting and malware. It's not unreasonable to mention that AutoIt has been used for these purposes but it is unreasonable to mention it in such a way as to portend that those usages are a primary or even intended purpose of the program.

EDIT: Also removed the link to the AutoIt forums regarding the GPL licensing issues in accordance with the revision to the history section.

SouthStExit (talk) 12:52, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Closed source?

AutoIt is open source actually, see http://www.autoitscript.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=8389 95.132.120.41 (talk) 20:20, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Noep, while that may contains some of AU3's source code, its not the source used in the official releases. the source used in the official releases are Not Public. Closed Source. sorry. :p

also that post is from 2005...

Divinity76 (talk) 09:48, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

AutoHotkey a code fork?! AutoHotkey was written from scratch baby...

The developers of AutoIt originally released the source code under the GPL license but the practice was discontinued beginning with version 3.2.0 in August 2006. This led to the fork of some code of version 3.1 by the AutoHotkey project[5], where now the community is continuing to develop the code as GPL.

According to the developer of AutoHotkey, Chris Mallett, as well as the AutoHotkey page (as seen below), AutoHotkey was written from scratch and was only modeled after AutoIt's scripting syntax. There was no project fork.

The first public beta of AutoHotkey was released on November 10, 2003[6] after author Chris Mallett's proposal to integrate hotkey support into AutoIt v2 failed to generate response from the AutoIt community.[7][8] So the author began his own program from scratch basing the syntax on AutoIt v2 and using AutoIt v3 for some commands and the compiler.[9] Later, AutoIt v3 switched from GPL to closed source because of "other projects repeatedly taking AutoIt code" and "setting themselves up as competitors."[10]

Please correct this discrepancy. ~ Agvulpine (talk) 20:23, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

EDIT: It should be noted that AutoHotkey began in 2003 where AutoIt closed its source in 2006. AutoHotkey was written by scratch with zero usage of AutoIt code until 2005 when Chris borrowed some code with permission and credit for a few dozen commands, amounting for less than 5% of the code at the time.

The statement suggesting that AutoIt's closing of its source led to the forking and creation of AutoHotkey is blatantly incorrect and misleading. ~ Agvulpine (talk) 20:41, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

I have changed the statement in the article, as it confused cause and effect. AutoHotKey was initially created while AutoIt v3 was still open source. AutoIt was closed after AutoHotKey used the code originating in AutoIt. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nutster (talk • contribs) 04:49, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

References

I just want to correct some mistakes, even though this is a decade-old discussion. Despite what people may say in forum posts, memory can be fickle, and Archive.org does not lie. AutoIt had public open-source releases in February, April and August 2004 (although beta versions were available earlier). AutoHotKey's changelog shows that many functions were derived from/based on/used AutoIt functions/code, the earliest being November 2003, and the latest being August 2004. Although AutoHotKey's changelog gives thanks to Jon from AutoIt, this does not imply that he had specific and personal "permission" from Jon to copy code from the AutoIt3 GPL version. AutoHotKey uses the AutoIt2 syntax, but Chris from AutoHotKey claims that (a) AutoHotKey was written from scratch and (b) he never had access to AutoIt2's source code. This means that AutoHotKey is not a "fork" of AutoIt in the technical sense, although journalists sometimes use technical terms loosely, and AutoHotKey's "history" is certainly tied in with AutoIt2. The fact that AutoHotKey's syntax is similar to AutoIt2's may also have contributed to the misunderstanding.

What's more, the statement "AutoIt was closed after AutoHotKey used the code originating in AutoIt" implies that AutoHotKey's use of AutoIt code was a major reason why AutoIt changed to closed-source, but in fact Jon from AutoIt's complaint was about projects that copied AutoIt3 code directly and without any attribution and simply rebranding it, and this does not describe what AutoHotKey did (see AutoHotKey's changelog), so clearly Jon must have been referring to other projects (not AutoHotKey). -- leuce (talk) 12:40, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

Stupid example

Showing how to use AutoIt to get Notepad to calculate an average would be good. This example shows that AutoIt can do it on its own, which is nice but not something anyone will use it for. Joepnl (talk) 02:54, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

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Broken example

The example script driving the Calculator app doesn't seem to work on Windows 10. I think the issue is the wait for a window of the "CalcFrame" class, which never shows up. The app seems to have been rewritten, thus sporting a new class name. It would be nice to have this script updated. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hobbes78 (talk • contribs) 14:23, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

example not acurate

a Leap year is NOT JUST any year thats dividable by 4. if the year is dividable by 100 its NOT a leap year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_year

85.149.83.125 (talk) 19:20, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Why Autolt?

To me, this is another variation of AutoHotKey. Why would anyone bother? — Ineuw talk 12:26, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that takes a neutral point of view. It should not promote anything. So it reports that these two similar tools exist. Brian R Hunter (talk) 18:00, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

You are absolutely correct. I made the comment at the end of a very frustrating search to get control of my software problems.— Ineuw talk 21:45, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Does AutoIt make any sense nowadays?

When it came out there only existed high-level languages with expensive IDEs. Today you can choose from many languages and IDEs that don't cost a lot of money or are even free. The possibilities of AutoIt are very limited and it can't do any magic that nobody else can't. Even in 1999 I could just send keys or mouse events via Win32 API. If you would use uncompiled scripts in real use at the end user you would have the advantage that you could change something quickly but mostly I see compiled scripts with no advantages over other languages... 91.17.152.103 (talk) 07:57, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

"Reply by Jon (AutoIt creator) to a forum topic discussing correct pronunciation".

This forum is not accessible if you aren't a member there. 91.58.118.24 (talk) 12:40, 8 December 2022 (UTC)