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StrokeIt
Abandoning StrokeItPosted by gemisigo
I never thought it would come to this, but after many years of being addicted to StrokeIt we finally parted. The last few weeks I've been studying other options and managed to completely replace SI with AHK and RM. Cerberus is the one to be blamed :P
I'll keep watching this forum and lend help if asked, though my knowledge might not be up-to-date anymore. Thanks for everything.
Neither, the transition was fairly smooth :)
RM stands for Radial Menu. It is an application written by a Croatian guy and is pure AHK. I cannot describe it precisely but it is a tool like SI, intended to assist in everyday work. Its main function is to show menu(s). The menu items can be submenus, files, folders, applications, or commands written in AHK script language. They are radially arranged (at design time in multi-ringers or automatically in one-ringers) on one or more concentric rings, thus providing the most frequently used items can be reached with the shortest move of the cursor. It also consists a very basic mouse gesture feature. It is limited compared to SI for it only recognizes horizontal and vertical moves and combinations of these up to three (no, no diagonals or custom gestures) and one of the directions is dedicated to showing the menu (that is, you cannot have any of the gestures starting to right if you set right as the 'show menu' gesture like I did). On the other hand, the combination of one or two or three move combinations (U, D, L, UD, UL, DR, LRL, URD, etc.) still leaves you with a very large set of possible gestures. The actions triggered (either by menu or by gesture) are scripted in AHK meaning you can take different course of action depending on window being the current, under the mouse, existing (but not necessarily active or even visible), the control under the cursor, the position of the cursor (relative to the screen or the window, your choice), the modifier key(s) held down (yes, we wanted this in SI for so long), the name of your computer, the time of the day or the day of the week, state of inner variables, state of variables defined by you, etc. Combinations of any or all the above. Virtually whatever you want. All this freedom has a price, of course. There is no GUI for this (except for creating and arranging menus), you have to write scripts and it requires some skill. This might not appeal to everyone (it surely does not). For those satisfied with current features of SI it is not an alternative and they should not switch. But if you feel you need more than SI has to offer (now), it is definitely worth trying.
Hi, Leo!
It's highly unlikely that I'll return to StrokeIt, but I'm not turning my back on it either. I'll keep watching the forum. I just won't be as active as I was in the past. Regarding the video, I could if I knew how to do it. It's funny how I did not need to do such things all these years. There is a quick tutorial at http://www.screenr.com/THMs. It shows how to create and modify a menu and menu items. Mouse gestures aren't spectacular since there is no line drawn and no GUI for creating gestures or actions. It's all about writing AHK scripts. All you need is a text editor (I prefer SciTE4AutoHotkey) and some basic knowledge about AHK. It's very simple and easy even for beginners, but it is capable of creating marvelous things (eg. RM itself).
gemisigo Wrote:
------------------------------------------------------- > The actions triggered (either by menu or by > gesture) are scripted in AHK meaning you can take > different course of action depending on window > being the current, under the mouse, existing (but > not necessarily active or even visible), the > control under the cursor, the position of the > cursor (relative to the screen or the window, your > choice), the modifier key(s) held down (yes, we > wanted this in SI for so long), the name of your > computer, the time of the day or the day of the > week, state of inner variables, state of variables > defined by you, etc. Combinations of any or all > the above. Virtually whatever you want. > This is basically what I'm doing in my StrokeIt alternative: http://www.strokesplus.com
CapersL Wrote:
> This is basically what I'm doing in my StrokeIt > alternative: > > http://www.strokesplus.com Hi, CapersL! I threw a glance at it and that thing looks very promising. I'm not going to switch to it (RM suits my needs down to the last bit + I prefer AHK over Lua) but it is very close to what I've expected StrokeIt to become one day. I'm looking forward to see its evolution. Is there a way to get notifications from the Downloads thread on that forum?
As you can see, I just slapped the forum up there, so I hadn't gone through the details of its configuration. I enabled category and forum subscriptions, appears to be a small icon on the far right of each row.
So basically, you're presenting me with a challenge to make StrokesPlus so good that it will compel even you to switch? =) I keed, I keed. Thanks for checking it out, though! Rob
Yes, it were the subscriptions I was looking for, thanks.
I'm not trying to convince you to try to convince me to switch :P Okay, I'll quit joking :) I've put too much work and effort to switch to RM and created and added to many small utilities I use very frequently to start that over again. Not all of them are mouse gesture related, many use hotkeys or instant gui created in AHK, etc. I haven't got too much time (my family and job are quite demanding) to play with new things but this one definitely deserved to be checked at least. Sadly, most I can do is read the forum (I've already registered) and try it once in a blue moon. Not too much of a help, I know :(
Hey Gemi! What do I see? Your leaving is sad news indeed. I already use SI basically just as a gesture-recognition engine: I have AHK execute nearly all its commands through hotkeys.
I had heard of RM before; so what is your reason exactly of switching to it, rather than directing all SI's command to AHK through hotkeys? From your description, it sounds like a step backwards. -------------------------------------------------------------------- I have been thinking of switching to Just Gestures for a while, and I must say Strokes Plus looks and feels very good too (I have tried it). My main reason is that SI is too unstable: 1. When I'm using it on a program that uses a lot of memory, like Firefox, it will often not recognize the line at all, or not properly. In the latter case, it just draws a straight line from where I pressed the mouse down to where I released it, totally ignoring any curves or angles I have made in between. It has been this way for a long time (can't remember whether it was different once), but even a fresh installation of XP didn't help. And it happens just as often in WIndows 7. Just Gestures and Strokes Plus don't do this. Well, they do it very rarely, and under such an enormous amount of stress that I don't really see it in practice. Perhaps this has something to do with the program's priority. 2. Often when a gesture fails in this way, the left-mouse button remains logically stuck in the "down" state (even though of course I don;t use the left button at all with strokes). That causes all sorts of problems, as you can imagine. For now, just recreating all my gestures is such a daunting task that I haven't started doing so yet, at least not until either program provides a way to convert my SI configuration and import it! I'm also still hoping that Jeff will come back and stabilize it.
Hi Cerberus!
I've experienced such omissions as well. I guess the engine is outdated and it could use some patches to be fully (or at least partly) compatible with Win 7. I've tried Just Gestures (I did not like it but that's just my personal opinion) and while Strokes Plus is quite good it is unlikely that I'll make another switch in the near future. I'm having some issues with RM as well (sometimes CTRL gets stuck and gesture action are not executed) but these might be the result of tampering with its internal files. Other than that it is very reliable. Choosing RM was not a step backwards. On the contrary, I'm very happy with it. Yes, it has smaller number of gestures (and no diagonals at all) but I really do not use that many. Hence recreating my gestures was not a tedious task, they were less and less every month in the last 2-3 years. It was much harder to remember the gestures I created for every task. For example, I use RM to assist in logging into different SQL servers (there are over 20 of them). It is a lot easier to use a gesture that pops up a menu where I can choose which login to use than to remember which gesture to use for a certain login. Jeff will have a lot of work to do to keep StrokeIt in shape. Still, I hope he is going to do it. It would be a pity to let it vanish. It was a piece of art a couple of years ago and it is capable of doing some magic but my needs have changed.
I understand that you're not in the mood to switch again any time soon. But I'm still curious about what you didn't like about Just Gestures. I'm still on the fence between JG and Strokes Plus. Is it the fact that entering hotkeys is so inconvenient? I've also had trouble importing my settings from another computer (haven't been able to solve it yet: after I import my settings, it works; however, as soon as I change or add anything to the gestures afterwards, no gesture is recognized any more, while the line is still being drawn). Otherwise it looks great and works very well.
Hmm I'm not sure I understand Ring Menu correctly, but Justgestures has these pop-up menus too if you want it too: just assign several actions to the same gesture, all at normal priority, and a menu will pop up instantly so you can choose between the options. Or are RM's menus special? I use the simplest gestures the most as well; but I do like assigning letters to programs, like W for Word, D for a dictionary, P for print, S for save: those are very easy to remember for me, usually no harder than down-left-up or something. It is especially useful for actions I don't do often. But I agree that the gestures that consist of one or two orthogonal strokes are the most important ones. Rob from Strokes Plus has promised us that he will release the program into the public domain if he ever finds he can't or doesn't want to maintain the program any more. That's really cool.
I just simply did not like it. I cannot tell why, there was nothing specific I can recall. I felt it a bit "uncomfortable". But that was months ago, JG might have changed since then.
And yes, there were some popup menus to choose different actions in JG. But RM (Radial Menu) is special in different way. RM is written in AHK and that makes cooperation between the actions easier and more fluid. You can store the result of one menu/hotkey/gesture action and then use it in the subsequent ones. Something similar was possible with Lua but with AHK it is so much easier. Even with Lua there was no other way to pass parameters to functions but to use the Clipboard. I have everything (clipboard, edit/list/checkboxes, complete forms, reading application titles, captions, status, strings, etc.) at my disposal with AHK. I can even check pixels if I want to (and I do that in some of my actions). Or the current user. Or machine name. Or temp folder path. All of these can be done in SI/JG (through AHK or some other script language), of course. But if I can achieve my goal using a single tool or a combination of two (or more) tools, I'd rather go with the one that requires the least effort. And that's pure AHK in my case. Another example: I have context sensitive menus set on XButton1 and XButton2. The one on XButton2 copies the text selected and pops up a menu with option to translate the text into different languages or search for it on google, wikipedia (in different languages as well), youtube, AHK homepage, helpfile of my choice or whatever I want. XButton1 gives me a menu that aids with object alignment in different programming IDEs and contains my logins using in SQL Management Studio.Now with alignment it is quite static but the logins change almost every week. I don't edit them as gestures or actions but have an .ini file storing them. Whenever I change the .ini the menu is reloaded, no coding necessary at all. I don't think that could be as easily done in JG as it was to do in RM. Yes, using menus to "remember" the gestures have constraints, as the "gesture" has to end in a certain region (the menu item) but it is large enough to hit it easily. And there were dozens (hundreds, perhaps) of gestures I never used because I forgot they existed. When put in a menu they are right in front of my eyes. Besides, all the common actions (copy, paste, cut, save, etc.) are assigned to simple mouse gestures (up, down, up-left, down-up, etc.) that do not pop up a menu. I have defined some hotkeys and hotstrings too. To be honest, my keyboard is customized to an extent that is very close to insanity :) Using RM both my keyboard efficiency and my mouse efficiency have increased. SI (or JG) helped with mouse but did nothing to make the keyboard a better tool. Stroke Plus looks very promising though. I'm curious where it will evolve.
I believe Miro hasn't brought out a new version of JG over the past months; I hope he will pick it up again. JG has a more accessible interface (except that entering keystrokes is a pain), but I am leaning towards Strokes Plus at the moment, because it is more or less complete already, and stable. What's holding me back is mainly the fact that I would have to remake 100 actions by hand. And I'd have to make AHK do all the OSD commands (I like it when I am told which gesture I've made). Rob from SP (or S+, as he calls it) is very nice and helpful. Can you imagine, he implemented a feature I requested within a day or so, and it was even much better than what I had in mind.
I use AHK for all those things too, pixel search, image search, GUIs, storing variables, etc. etc. I can understand why you might want to use AHK for everything in theory (but in practice I want a robust gesture-recognition engine, and using two programs doesn't have any noticeable effect as far as I'm concerned). Yes, AHK is fantastic! And if you don't need gestures, there is no reason at all to use anything else. As an example, I have just made a little program that allows me to type characters of the International Phonetic Alphabet. I double-press Capslock, and then pressing the same letters several times in a row cycles through the charcters behind it, etc. I don't know how RM works exactly, but having visible menus that tell you what a stroke is going to do when you move over them sounds good, especially for memorization. The disadvantage is that you need to look at your gesture: I normally don't look at my cursor at all when I make a gesture. I can just read my code or Internet page and do other things while I make a large, wild gesture with the mouse. Hmm how is your keyboard customized, then? I have a fair number of hotkeys and hotstrings too. Something I really like is that I press e// for é, o~~ for õ, etc.: that means I never have to use modifier keys for accents.
In fact, RM does include a basic (but reliable) mouse gesture recognition engine. The gestures are limited to combinations (up to three) of the four basic directions (Up, Right, Down and Left) like U, UR, URD, ULD, etc. The main function of RM is to show a menu. You hold down RMB (by default) and do the gesture (Down by default but I changed it to Right), the menu pops up, you move the cursor to the menu item and either release RMB to trigger the action or click LMB to open a submenu in case it exists. That's why I said it is harder to perform (you have to hit the menu item) but is easier to "remember" (you can see it).
All of my "menu based gestures" start with moving right and then selecting from the menu, hence all the gestures starting with Right are disabled. But I can use modifier keys to choose different actions, so I don't miss them at all. All the other gestures are free to use and as long as you do the sequence properly the length of the sections does not matter. No diagonals recognized here, therefore it is not very sensitive to errors. These gestures can be done without paying attention. Most of my customization are not related to AHK. I'm Hungarian :) Our alphabet is teeming with accented characters (áóéúÃöőüű + capitals). I use a highly modified Dvorak layout that has all these on and above the home row. It is an altered keyboard dll. The modifier key is Alt Gr which I use to type a whole lot of different characters and even strings (mostly used in programming languages) with a single (double) keystroke. But there are many hotkeys to do routine tasks or to "type" things that did not "fit" the layout, such as snippets and logins. By the way, would you mind sharing your script for International Phonetic Alphabet?
Sorry it took so long; I understand the benefits of RM. For me the main reason not to want that may be that I don't like to relearn my routine that I have had for so long! Those menus look easier to remember, as you say. I would miss quickly flicking to the Right to go to the next page, or redo, or go forward one level in Explorer...
Your accent keyboard sound convenient! I personally prefer not having to hold down a modifier key, so I use hotstrings in ahk: if I type e// I type é, a-=- for Ä, etc. My IPA script works by letting you cycle through characters. Double capslock activates it, or you can add another hotkey. Then, if you type a once, you get a; if you type a twice in a row, you get æ, and thrice É‘, etc. The cycling is reset when you type another letter, or a space, or left/right, so that you can type aa even during IPA mode. IPA mode is closed with escape, or you can add other hotkeys. I use a number of very frequent characters now (see file), but you can easily add characters. The reason I use cycling is that one often types IPA for a continuous period; that is, you don't use IPA often, and not one character at a time, so a special mode with cycling seemed better than hotstrings—which would also be hard to memorize. But you could use it for some kind of accents mode with another hotkey too, I suppose. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5056292/IPATyper.ahk http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5056292/IPA.ico http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5056292/IPA_active.ico P.S. I plan to make the code a bit more elegant so that disabling the hotkeys is done automatically (now I had to add a list of all letters of the alphabet by hand), and so that the number of characters per key is unlimited (currently limited to ten, but this limit can easily be increased). If you have questions, let me know! P.P.S. This message is picked up as spam, so I hope Leo will approve it...
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