Help—Sigil 2.02 blocking external macros (autohotkey)

[hayaku]

Hello, sorry about late response!

Normally I bookmark posts that I create asking for help, then check back daily.

Since this post went to moderator for approval, there was nothing to bookmark at that specific point, I waited for email confirmation post was accepted. Seems these are not sent out, and I guess life got in the way in between

In any case, I went through absolute hell and back but did manage to solve it!

Since this issue was only happening with Sigil (I could post custom characters in all other apps, including older versions of Sigil) I figured this would be a good place to start with the debugging.

In the end, the issue was with AutoHotKey. What I did was navigated to the install directory and set AutoHotkey.exe to run with administrator privileges. Problem solved!

I have no idea in the world why AHK lacking administrator privileges would have caused characters to not come up with Sigil 2.02 specifically (and no other apps) but I suppose that's a deeper mystery.

In any case, hopefully this thread can sit here as a google-able resource for anybody else who comes into this specific issue.

Thanks for all of your help and support, and once again, I'm sincerely sorry for missing all the comments!

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by hayaku

. . .
In the end, the issue was with AutoHotKey. What I did was navigated to the install directory and set AutoHotkey.exe to run with administrator privileges. Problem solved!

I have no idea in the world why AHK lacking administrator privileges would have caused characters to not come up with Sigil 2.02 specifically (and no other apps) but I suppose that's a deeper mystery.

Curious: which version of AHK?

BR

[hayaku]

Version is 1.1.37.01, the most recent release of V1.

None of my scripts work on V2, so that is not an option, sadly

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by hayaku

None of my scripts work on V2, so that is not an option, sadly

Maybe not an easy option, you mean. But it IS an option. You could always update your scripts to work with the latest version.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by hayaku

Version is 1.1.37.01, the most recent release of V1.

None of my scripts work on V2, so that is not an option, sadly

Why sadly? Are there new features in AHK V2 you would use? My usage of AHK is more-or-less static. I haven't added any substantive macros for years, only a few variants of existing ones. Which is why I haven't updated it even to the latest 1.1.3x.

Back to the deeper mystery: Why should you need to run AHK V1 with admin privileges to get it to interoperate with Sigil V2, when other AHK V1 users, like me, don't. When AHK is not running with admin privs, something must be consuming the key sequences AHK is sending… but what?

If you use any Sigil plugins, try 'disabling' them by… not sure how, maybe just remove? Does Sigil have a 'disable-plugins' command line option?

Have you tried running Sigil and AHK V1 (no admin-priv) in Windows Safe mode?

BR

[KevinH]

Sigil plugins are not active in any way until launched by Sigil. The plugin interface by design isolates them from having any impact on Sigil itself. So Sigil plugins are not the issue here.

[BetterRed]

So what do you suggest might be the cause?

The OPs problem is Sigil V2 specific, i.e. his AHK V1 is operating normally with all other applications, just as it did with earlier versions of Sigil, just my AHK V1 does with Sigil V2 and every other application I run.

So where would the differences between the OPs setup and my setup be found… given its a Sigil-only problem the Sigil Preferences directory looks a logical place to start. When I look in there the most likely candidate I see is the plugins sub-directory… I also see the plugin preference settings are kept in a separate directory.

So, if I had the problem: I would close Sigil, secure its preference directory by archiving it into a .ZIP, delete the plugins subdirectory, and restart Sigil. If the problem remained I'd reinstate the reference directory from the .ZIP (then I'd try running in Safe mode to eliminate other tasks**). But if the problem disappeared, I'd reinstate the plugins one-by-one until the problem reappeared… and if it didn't I'd look for a brick wall.

** I have a problem imagining how/why a third task would consume keystroke sequences emanating from AHK V1 destined for Sigil V2 specifically… but only if AHK V1 was running with normal privileges.

BR

[KevinH]

Again unlike calibre, no plugin is run on Sigil start-up and in fact none are run until something is actually launched by the user in Sigil. Only a list of the folder names and parsing of plugin.xml files is done, and None of which can prevent shortcuts from being delivered to Sigil itself. So you can safely ignore the plugin directory. Might try with a different ini file just to rule that out.

If this was a linux box or macOS, I would bet ownership or permissions of Sigil itself or one of its components is messed up requiring Admin privs to connect to it. Or alternatively the HotKeys stuff is being run under some other owner or permissions and therefore without admin privs can not deliver events to Sigil.

Or some other piece of software is launching Sigil under its watch (and its ownership or permissions). This may be caused by some strange system monitoring tool or anti-virus tool.

Or If AutoHotKeys is being run as a service (or server) my guess would be it is being launched or run with the wrong permissions or ownership.

I would examine the Windows property setting for launching Sigil. Check or update ownership of all of Sigil and its components.

Then try directly launching Sigil using a commandshell or bat file.

Or create a new user and install Sigil using the official installer under that new user to see if it exhibits the same strange symptoms.

Either way, this issue is specific to his/her machine in some way.

[BetterRed]

According to the OP, he went through hell and back to discover the problem could be overcome by running AHK with admin privileges… IMO that is a somewhat obscure solution. So I imagine he explored all the usual suspects.

If the OP zipped up the Preferences directory, deleted it and then started Sigil (as they do normally) they'd have a fresh default set of preferences without changing anything else. If the problem disappeared - then its something in the existing preferences.

BR

[KevinH]

Or just rename the ini files to save it and Sigil default prefs will be recreated.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Or just rename the ini files to save it and Sigil default prefs will be recreated.

Interesting, on Windows, if I rename sigil.ini, then start and stop Sigil I don't get a fresh sigil.ini, I get four fresh files:

sigil_v6.ini
sigil_clips_v6.ini
sigil_index_v6.ini
sigil_searches_v6.ini.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Interesting, on Windows, if I rename sigil.ini, then start and stop Sigil I don't get a fresh sigil.ini, I get four fresh files:

sigil_v6.ini
sigil_clips_v6.ini
sigil_index_v6.ini
sigil_searches_v6.ini.

I don't think I can add much more without input from the OP.

BR

[KevinH]

Yes for Sigil 2.x which uses Qt6 the new ini file is called sigil_v6.ini, but if an older sigil.ini file exists, Sigil will read from that to create sigil_v6.ini, otherwise it is created from defaults.