Alt_menu_acceleration_DISABLER.ahk

The idea to do this was thought up by TaranVH a previous editor for LTT.

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To paraphrase Taran;

In just about any Windows application, pressing (and releasing!) the alt key will highlight the menu bar in a special way, where pressing a letter key immediately after, (Like f) will result in the menu being opened. Further keystrokes will bring you even deeper into the menu. This is called "menu acceleration."

Because this system allows you to completely release the alt key before pressing the next keystrokes, it means that alt is not really a modifier key... it's an obligatory STICKY KEY

So, in applications that treat the alt key as a modifier, like Premiere, you sometimes end up activating the menus when you don't want to! (And there's no reason to use menu acceleration anyway, since Premiere already allows you to bind those actions to custom shortcuts.)

I noticed that the File menu only appears to become activated on the key-up event. However, functionally, it actually activates on the key DOWN event. Therefore, attempting to block this using LAlt up::[insert code here] will never work.

I also noticed that if I pressed down LAlt, held it, and then pressed and released F12, that when I released LAlt. NOTHING HAPPENED. And, when I then pressed f, NOTHING CONTINUED TO HAPPEN. Brilliant.

And it works with any keystroke, not just F12. so, to nullify the menu acceleration, we have to pair alt with another keystroke. but which key can we sacrifice? IT can't be used for anything else. Some people would think to use F13 through F24. Those poeple are wrong.

F24 is just the name that we give to the scan code 76, also known as SC076. But the scan codes go much higher than this.

So essentially this script is disabling menu accelaration by sending off a scan code keystroke to more or less nullify the alt keystroke.