AhkWord 56

Superseded by AhkWord 57, which fixes Replace All, Change Case and Clean up pasted text damaging footnotes, cross-references and tables of contents.

AhkWord is a word processor for Windows that AutoHotkey scripts can drive while you type. This is a work in progress.

Download and run

Nothing to install. Choose one of the two downloads below:

• AhkWord-56.zip (17 MB): everything AhkWord needs except .NET. If your computer hasn't got the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime, AhkWord offers on its first start to download it from Microsoft for itself only (about 70 MB, checked against Microsoft's checksums, into AhkWord's own folder: nothing is installed in Windows, and no administrator is needed), or to open Microsoft's page to install it for all of Windows.
• AhkWord-56-complete.zip (89 MB): the same with .NET 10 inside, for a computer that may not have it or isn't online. It asks nothing.

Then:

1. Unzip it anywhere you can write to: your Documents, a USB stick (not Program Files).
2. Double-click AhkWord.exe. Windows may say Windows protected your PC the first time, because AhkWord isn't signed: click More info, then Run anyway.

Just trying it out? Put an empty file named portable beside AhkWord.exe first. Everything AhkWord keeps (settings, recent files, templates, recovery copies) then stays in its own folder, and deleting the folder leaves no trace. Without it, settings are kept for your Windows user, shared by every copy of AhkWord.

AhkWord.exe is AutoHotkey v2.0.30, unchanged, under AhkWord's name, so you don't need AutoHotkey installed; it is under the GNU GPL v2, and its license and a link to its source come in the zip. The other parts' licenses are in THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md and licenses.

The documentation is at https://burque505.github.io/AhkWord/, and what is done and what comes next is in the roadmap.

New since AhkWord 55 (iteration 56)

• Event hooks (Tools > Event Hooks): a macro that AhkWord runs by itself when it starts, when a document is opened, made, saved, printed or closed, or when a style changes. Nothing of yours has to keep running. The macro is told what happened and which file or style it was about, and works on the document through Rte like any macro.
  • BeforeSave and Closing wait for their macro, so it can change the document before it is saved, or save it before the window closes.
  • Each hook has an On box: switch a macro off without unhooking it, and on again when you want it.
  • New... writes a starting macro for the event, with an example in it; Edit opens it in the editor Windows has for .ahk files; Run Now tries it.
  • A hook that saves doesn't set itself off again.
• PDF on save is now an event hook: run it from Tools > Macros (or with a hotkey) to switch a PDF beside each save on or off.
• Open AutoHotkey Dash, a new macro: AutoHotkey's Dash, whose Editor settings choose the program that edits macros (with AutoHotkey installed).
• New to AutoHotkey? Getting started now explains what AutoHotkey adds to AhkWord, which program opens a macro and how to change it, and what portable mode carries with it. You don't need AutoHotkey, or to know it, to write documents.

For snippets and the new headers and footers, see AhkWord 55.

Thanks to TheArkive's M-ArkDown, whose Markdown extensions AhkWord follows for list styles and picture sizes.