Poor man's highlighting with AHK

[johnp]

I sometimes want to highlight some text in a topic and am too lazy to get into
edit mode and type in all those '%' characters.

Here is a little AutoHotKey hack to highlight a text area without entering the
editor. To use it, select a piece of text in a topic while in view mode, then
type <Alt>-h . (If you already have Alt-h mapped to something, change
the 'h' in the first line of the script to the character of your choice).

This could obviously be tweaked to do underlining, italics, etc. The ambitious
could probably implement an entire WYSIWYG editor this way, and never
enter edit mode again...  :twisted:

 - John

-----------cut here------------------------------
!h::

; CT - highlight the selected text.
Send !e
Send ^c
ClipWait 1, 1
Send `%`%class=highlite`%`%
Send %clipboard%
Send `%`%`%`%
Send !e
Return

[johnp]

I just learned something about AutoHotKey, which is that 'Sendinput' is much
faster than 'Send', so here is an improved version of the above script:

-----------cut here------------------------------
!h::

; CT - highlight the selected text.
Send !e
Send ^c
ClipWait 1, 1
Send `%`%class=highlite`%`%
Sendinput, %clipboard%
Send `%`%`%`%
Send !e
Return

[honwahp]

Thanks John for sharing this autohotkey script.  It is really helpful .  However, it works fine only with English words and doesn't work with Chinese words.  With Chinese words, the words that I highlighted turned into question marks(with the highlight) after I pressed Alt-h. It would be really nice if this problem can be solved.  I am also curious to know if there is a method to change the highlight color to one that I choose myself.  

[kuehnm]

I don't know whether this will work with Chinese (as I have no way of testing it), but try this:

Code:

F4::    ; or whatever shortkey you want
clipboard =
Send, ^x
ClipWait
clipBoard = %clipboard%
clipboard = `%`%class=highlite`%`%%clipboard%`%`%`%`%
send, ^v
return

Manfred

P.S. I find that "Send" works more reliably than "SendInput" or "SendPlay" on Windows 7 (64 bit).

[honwahp]

Hi Manfred thanks for responding.   But sorry to tell you that when I ran your code(and pressed the hotkey), nothing happened and the code didn't even work with English words.   

[kuehnm]

Don't understand.

It works for me ... What Windows version are you running?

If you want to play, you might want to try "SendInput" for "Send". You might also want to substitute "^c" for "^x", as some keyboards (and, if I remember correctly ConnectedText also) have a problem with "^x"

Finally, do you use "F4" for anything else?

Manfred

[kuehnm]

Oh, and you have to be in the editor for it to work. (I should have looked at the top of the Subject ...!)

This also works from view mode (at least for me).

Code:

F4:: ; highlight selected text
Send, !e
clipboard =
Send, ^x
ClipWait
clipBoard = %clipboard%
clipboard = `%`%class=highlite`%`%%clipboard%`%`%`%`%
send, ^v
Send, !e
return

Manfred

[kuehnm]

The last script won't work with Chinese either. Trying to highlight a Chinese passage from Code Beamer also gives only question marks.

Doing just a little more research, I think it has to do with the version of AHK you (and I) run. It can't do unicode. This one, the unicode version, might give you better results:

http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/topic50485.html&highlight=unicode

I say "might," as I have not tried it.

Manfred

[honwahp]

Thanks! Manfred.  I'll definitely take a look when I have the time.

[kuehnm]

This works for Chinese text as well (without a new installation of AhK)—at least for me:

Code:

F4::
Clipboard =
Send !e
Send ^c
ClipWait
Transform UC, Unicode         ; Save Unicode text
Transform Clipboard, Unicode, %UC%
Send, `%`%class=highlite`%`%
Send, ^v
Send, `%`%`%`%
Sleep 50
Send, !e
Return

Let me know whether it works for you.

Best wishes,
Manfred

P.S.: Look at "Transform" in the AhK help file. Should also work for other languages.

[honwahp]

Yes, Manfred.  It does work.  But about one out of five times there was this error message that said " Cannot open clipboard", which is a little bit annoying.  Anyway, thanks very much for your help

Howard

[kuehnm]

This seems to be a general problem, not one having to do with Ahk. See, for instance http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1859102/how-can-i-fix-cannot-open-clipboard-access-denied-errors

Perhaps adding Sleep, 50 between Clipboard = and Send ^c will help.

Manfred

P.S.: A Google search for "cannot open clipboard" will bring up many discussions; none of the ones I have seen help a great deal. Just repeat the action after a little while.

[honwahp]

Perhaps adding Sleep, 50 between Clipboard = and Send ^c will help.

This really solved the problem!  I experimented about thirty times and no more error messages!

[kuehnm]

I am glad it works.
Manfred

[johnp]

 I am also curious to know if there is a method to change the highlight color to one that I choose myself.  

In your CSS file, look for the lines:

   .highlite {
       background-color:#ffff66;
    }

And change the color to your preferred one.

 - John