Add Emoji Characters to Any Windows Document (AutoHotkey Hotstrings)

Why Search Through Pop-up Tools When You Can Directly Enter Any Emoji into Your Documents, E-Mails, and Web Editing Windows with AutoHotkey?

“I went to the 🏖 on a 🌞day. The 🌞 was so 🔆 that I needed to wear 🕶. I was lucky enough to see a 👩 in a 👙🖐 to me. I saw 🌊s, ⛵s, 🌈s, and a 🦄. Maybe, I had a few too many 🍻s.” 🙄

Years ago I wrote about an AutoHotkey app called WinCompose: a Robust Compose Key for Windows which adds special characters to any Windows document or Web editing field. It appeared to use the Input command in conjunction with a “Compose” key to enter memorable keystrokes for inserting special characters. WinCompose has since converted to a different programming language and added emoji support. Similar to emoticons, emojis add special cartoon-like pictograms to your documents. Unlike emoticons, many programs recognize emojis—as long as the software includes UTF-8 support.

Advertisements

Old ComputorEdge E-Books Customers Get New AutoHotkey Book Bundle Discounts

Have You Ever Purchased Any AutoHotkey E-Books at ComputorEdge E-Books?

You Can Recycle Those Same Dollars When
Upgrading to the AutoHotkey Mega Library Bundle!

Any dollars you previously spent on AutoHotkey books at ComputorEdge E-Books qualify as discounts toward the current complete AutoHotkey Mega Bundle. Whether you purchased only one AutoHotkey book four years ago or last year’s seven-book bundle, you can get a dollar-for-dollar reduction on the price of the entire nine-book AutoHotkey Mega Bundle—all books, all e-book formats.

A Trick for Inserting Next Friday’s Date into Any Document (AutoHotkey Tip)

An AutoHotkey Technique for Determining Date for Any Coming Day of the Week, Plus a Pop-up for Picking Future Weekdays

“Do You Know Next Friday’s Date?”

We record upcoming events on our monthly calendars, but we live one week at a time. Most people work Monday through Friday and relax on Saturday and Sunday. If someone gives us a date for an occasion, we ask, “What day is that?”—meaning “Give me the day of the week.”

A Beginner’s Guide to Understanding AutoHotkey If Statements

It Can Get Pretty Confusing When Considering Which AutoHotkey If Conditional to Use

Occasionally, when updating or modifying a script I run into a problem where an If conditional just stops working. At first, I experience the usual confusion, but, eventually, it occurs to me to enclose the subject of the conditional in parentheses. The code starts working again. How does this happen?

Open and Print Files with the QuickLinks App (AutoHotkey Tip from a Reader)

Khanh Ngo Offers an Improvement to the QuickLinks.ahk Script Which Enables the Loading of Any Selected File with Your Favorite Program, Plus QuickLinks Can Now Print Files!

Recently I received the following message:

Hi, Jack,

I just found your website when searching around for AHK tips and found your QuickLinks—very impressive, with minimal coding needed.

I’m currently making good use of it and added a small improvement to QL_MenuHandler that I think you might appreciate too:

When executing a shortcut, send currently selected files as an argument to that program. Basically, open the selected file with the QuickLinks program.

This is quite convenient when opening a text or image editor.

Let me know what you think.

Khanh

After reviewing the changes to the QuickLinks.ahk script, I saw that with the short piece of code, Khanh had greatly expanded the possibilities. What started out as a tool for quickly opening favorite programs and Web pages turned into a method for opening any file with those same preferred applications. I immediately incorporated the new code in the current download.

Italicize Your Hotstring Replacements with this Input Command Ploy (AutoHotkey Tip)

A Maneuver That Opts for Italic Output by Tricking the AutoHotkey Input Command, Plus a Tip for Creating Italic Hotstrings

In the past few blogs, I’ve explored using a data table to drive an AutoHotkey application featuring the enigmatic Input command. The article “Input Command Creates Temporary Hotstrings from Data Table (AutoHotkey INI File Technique)” demonstrates how to initiate access to a data table using the Input command. Following up, “More Hotstring Tricks Using the Input Command and a Data Table (AutoHotkey Legal Lingo Tips)” gives us an alternative menu generated from the data table when no match occurs in the Input command. With a simple modification of the AutoHotkey Input command, we add an option for converting the Latin legal terms into italics for particular word processors.

More Hotstring Tricks Using the Input Command and a Data Table (AutoHotkey Legal Lingo Tips)

The AutoHotkey Input Command Makes It Easy to Use the LegalInput.ini Data Table in Multiple Ways

A few weeks back I demonstrated how to build an INI data table for driving AutoHotkey scripts. I used the INI file format (LegalInput.ini) because it includes one index for quickly looking up records. In the file, I created four-character codes for accessing records which include the English legal definition, the Latin term, and a description (if any).

While essential to the AutoHotkey feature discussed last time, you’ll find the INI file structure incidental to the technique discussed in this blog. You can use an INI file either for its index or as a standard data table with no special capabilities. As demonstrated in this piece, you’ll find a number of different ways to take advantage of a data table—without requiring an INI file. An INI file gives you a convenient means for quickly accessing data, but (especially for short files) you’ll discover numerous other methods for extracting the information you want.