Time to set some projects aside.

As I mentioned in a recent post, I'm considering that it's time to stop writing code.  Now I know I'll never be away from it 100% but I do need a rest away from it for a while.  Whether or not I will stay with writing in AutoIt is also up in the air.  I will continue to update and patch current released software, however I am retiring several projects that were on the drawing board, even a couple that were near release.

If I start any new projects they will be very small  and in all likelihood will not be written in AutoIt3.  I think the future of AutoIt is up in the air and it may have already reached it's maximum stage of development using the current core.  I can't get the feeling out of my mind that we may have seen the last release of AI with version 3.3.6.1.  In my mind, that's a shame but sooner or later any software will reach a dead-end after which all that's left is simple eye-candy and not more functionality.

I have an offer of help to add some functionality to that I've wanted to the PCRE Toolkit and I am going to take that person up on his kind offer.  If I don't get those additions done then I will never be satisfied with that app and several people know what those additions are and have been looking forward to them.  I would hate to disappint them and myself so that is one project that will stay active.

I also don't think I'm going to be dedicating as much time to the forums, although I will still at least be checking for messages on a daily basis.

To all those that I've been "over the river" with for the last few yers, it's been a slice and keep at it as long as you can or until the fun goes out of it.

Next on the horizon

The release of the PCRE Toolkit now puts that project into maintenance mode until it's time for a major update.  That means it's now time to get on to another project  Which at this point I think will be another Toolkit but this time for SQLite.  Before I get started on that I want to finish up a personal SVN / Bug Tracking project I've been working at.  And of course there is always more work to get done on my latest version of Project Express.

Maybe I'll just take a couple of days off and rethink all this.  As a matter of fact I might just take a few days and rethink AutoIt , after all these years using it, maybe it's time to move on.

PCRE Toolkit for AutoIt RELEASED

At long last the first release version of the PCRE Toolkit for AutoIt is available for public download.

If you are planning on working with regular expressions then this may be the only tool you need.

Download it now.

The help file is not yet ready but since you are a developer you should be able to figure it out.
Please post any comments you may have or suggestions for improvement.  I'm also looking for comments about whether the help file should be included with the install or a separate download.

I hope you enjoy using it more than I've enjoyed creating it.

Update:  Gone now are most of the control tool tips in favor of displaying the information in the status bar.

PCRE Toolkit updated again

See this post
This is mainly a cosmetic update but a couple of minor bugs were also fixed.

Notice to Fennek

You must be joking when you say that you are going to flood members of the AutoIt forums with spam.  That isn't even good for a laugh and I'm really getting sick and tired of idiots like you, with an IQ smaller than their shoe size, starting this kind of crap.

You're a 16 year old punk who seems to forget thet the people who taught you to write AutoIt code certainly didn't teach you everything they know or even anywhere near what they know.  That list is only a very small percentage of the total members of the forum.  Of those on the list there are several who have been writing code and hacking longer than you have been breathing, and do you think for a second , when you start flooding them with spam, that they won't retaliate?  It would take very few lines of code to write a script capable of messing up your site to the point of it being totally un-usable.  Script kiddies like you annoy us at the best of times so don't push your luck with this kind of nonsense.  On top of that I already have good mail protection but if I so desired I could let yours through long enough to not only get your ip but to get the address where we should report it and then that address gets flooded with abuse reports.  Do yourself a favor and pull it now before some fool actually follows up on what you started.  When that happens, it won't matter who actually sent the spam, it will be you that takes the fall for it.

You might not care about the reputaion that AutoIt gets from garbage coders like yourself but we do and we will put a stop to it.

Malicious code

There is a trend that seems to come and go in waves and right now it's at a high point again.  That is people asking for help with code which is meant to be used for either malicious reasons or to bypass some security feature like a Captcha or the biggie, cheating at a multi-player game when the TOS explicitly states it is against the rules.

Just a note for those people.  Stay away from the AutoIt forums, we don't need you nor do we want you there and you must be wise enough to know you shouldn't go where you are not wanted.  That would just make you subject to a lot of abuse.

We are also aware that such abuse will (in your mind) be our fault but we are all willing to live with that as long as you just go away.

Tutorials

There are a few good tutorials with precise examples of working with AutoIt code.  Several are already listed in the menu at http://dundats.mvps.org/autoit/ and I hope to soon add this one to the list.
http://403forbidden.dyndns.org/?page_id=26

SQLite UDF

This is a great little library with only one minor drawback.  The SQLite.au3 file #Includes File.au3 (Which I seldom use at all) all for the sake of a little 6 or 8 line function.  Now what?
Simple, I'm going to copy that _TempFile() function into a new copy of SQLite.au3, give the function a new name, modify the calls to it with the new name, and then rename the SQLite.au3 file to SQLiteEx.au3.  That will solve the issue and the file changes are very simple with a script doing all the work.  I may even go so far as to make a copy of SQLite.dll.au3 and call it SQLiteEx.dll.au3 and make the asociated chnages for that as well.  Yes there is a reason for doing it and I'll go into those details at a later time.

_GUI Library functions

While I realize that it was a lot of work re-writing PaulIA's old library functions, the one thing I certainly don't appreciate is the lost functionality.  They definitly needed work but at least the functions you needed were there.
I don't know who made the decision about what should be removed and what should simply be changed but somewhere along the way things got messed up.  On top of that, most of the examples are total garbage.  They simply don't apply to what the average user is going to need.  I'm also very well aware that I'm not the only one that feels this way, not by a longshot and when it come time to prune down the size of the AutoIt install I'm very apt to suggest that they can all be removed since it's a total waste of time trying to work with them.

That's my gripe for today.  Feel free to comment but I'm not in the mood to argue about them and if we get into an argument... you lose.

Scripting for cash

There has been a suggestion recently that a forum where people could request a script and then people could bid to write that script for them with some of the proceeds going to AutoItScript.com.  On the surface it would appear to be a good suggestion and is primarily the same as RentACoder.  I'm not at all sure just how practical it would be in the end.  There is a tremendous amount of potential for abuse and indeed even for malicious code to be inserted.  In order for it to work as intended, I think it would require a lot of oversight by moderators as well as a registry of users who are able to code the scripts properly.  Making it onto that list would require a high level of AutoIt skills and the code would then have to be checked by someone to make sure there is nothing malicious happening in it.  Most of the forum moderators are already overburdened with their own work and their forum duties, so who is going to do all this moderating?

Then there is the question of payment.
Just what is the best way to go about making sure that everything is collected for and the proceeds properly apportioned?  Can we trust everyone to collect and then forward the correct amount to AutoItScript.com or not?  If not then again it takes someone to handle the bookwork and collections.  Should there be a minimum charge for the service?

My last question for today is;
Does Jon want this type of service running as a part of the forums?  It's really up to him and long discussions about how it could be incorporated and indeed whether or not it should be incorporated are moot at this point.
Personally, it is going to take a lot more thought and some input from Jon before I will decide whether or not to support such an undertaking.