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I recently came across a Windows library called AHK that gives me great control to interact with applications.

Is there an equivalent in the Linux world?

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And what does AHK do that is so great? –  Rob Jones Aug 28 '09 at 1:36
see the website for details. I used it to automate some complex interactions with a CAD application. –  hoju Aug 28 '09 at 6:34
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5 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

There are several ports of autohotkey to linux in progress.
Here is mine: AutoHotkey using winelib
source: ahkx.git
autohotkey forum
Also, you can checkout IronAhk, autokey, and xdotool

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There's nothing quite as awesome as AutoHotkey for Linux unfortunately. However a program called xbindkeys will do a lot of the keyboard bindings that you can do in AutoHotkey.

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I don't think there is an equivalent to AHK in the Linux world. You might be able to get it to run with Wine, and if you were up to the challenge you could port it since the c++ source is availiable.

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The thing Autohotkey does so well in Windows is work with the GUI as well as the system itself. I haven't found anything close to it in Linux. There are hotkey apps and apps that do text-replacement but nothing like Autohotkey on Windows.

I can't figure out if IronAHK is still in Alpha or it's abandoned altogether. Haven't heard much of anything lately. Autokey is just text-replacement if I recall correctly.

You can run Autohotkey in Wine but it loses the ability to manipulate the GUI in that environment and only can interact with other programs running in Wine as far as I know.

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I would certainly look at Gnome-Do on which functions much like Quicksilver on the Mac. Fantastic launcher and more for Linux.

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Pretty sure gnome-do has nothing to do with automating key/mouse events. –  John Ledbetter Aug 28 '09 at 17:30
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