Creating your own ALEKS keyboard shortcuts using AutoHotKey

[dcan]

I am using ALEKS on a laptop and got tired of "a-shift-6-2" to say "a squared". My pinky was dying from all the "shift shift shift shift" pressing.

So I downloaded an old faithful, AutoHotKey, and came up with some simple key remappings to speed things up. AutoHotKey lets you (among other things) create macro commands that send keystrokes and mouse clicks automatically. I used it to remap four keys to cut down on the "shift" plague. Downloading it and using it takes about 5 minutes.

If you download it, to do this all you need is the following commands in the script file. To edit the script file, just make sure AutoHotKey is running and right-click on it (in the system tray) and select "Edit This Script". You can leave the example or delete it all and replace it with the below, it's up to you if you want to play with it more than this.

Here's what I used:

Code:

`::^
=::+
[::(
]::)

That's it. What this does is the following:

• Maps the ` key to ^ (one keypress to make an exponent)
  
• Maps the = key to the + key (one keypress for addition)
  
• Maps the [ key to ( (one keypress to open parentheses)
  
• Maps the ] key to ) (one keypress to close parentheses)
  

Keep in mind these keys are remapped for everything as long as AutoHotKey is running, so pressing the above keys in an e-mail will still result in the remapped output. You can suspend AHK by right-clicking it's icon and selecting "Suspend" and it will stop doing that until you start it up again. That way you can have it only running when you are using ALEKS.

This is saving my sanity and my fingers. Hope this helps someone else!