Congratulations Steve.

I just returned home from a forced hiatus and noticed that we have a new Moderator.  Melba 23.  This is great news and I'm sure he will do a good job.  My most heartfelt congrats to both Steve and whoever it was that decided he should be promoted into that position.

Developer with too many privileges.

The forums are getting totally out of hand at times.
If you look at the thread in Developer Chat regarding updateing the StringRegExp GUI you will see that it is now locked.  That comes from someone who has recently become a Developer.  Unfortunatly that also gives said person Moderator priveledges.  It was locked simply because I answered that I wouldn't be doing any changes to it.  That reply was in response to the question in this thread.
http://www.autoitscript.com/forum/topic/134937-improvements-for-stringregexpgui/page__view__findpost__p__942231
It had nothing to do at all with the person who locked it.  Now we have a Developer who gets into a huff and decides that the RegEx GUI will not be part of the next release.  While I personally don't think it should be part of the AutoIt install that does not mean that everyone will feel the same way.  That was a personal statement and was placed in the post as a reason that I wouldn't be working on that code at all.  In my opinion, that old GUI needs too much work to bring it up to what is really needed for an effective tool.  That is one that will test everything properly and be easy for beginners to use.
While it is no major loss since there are a few other scripts/apps that do the job and do it better in my opinion that is no reason for the attitude shown in the last post of the thread.

Several of the recent developments both in the forums and in AutoIt itself already have me considering whether or not I should even continue with updating AutoIt as new versions become available.  Again this is personal.  I know that others think that functionality should continually be expanded but as far as I'm concerned it has already far surpassed it's primary goals.  Do we need all of the extras?  That depends on what you are using AutoIt for.  I don't.  If the Developers want to go down this road then perhaps it's time for them to start working on AutoIt4.  That way they won't be breaking any existing code because it won't be compatable at all anyway.  They will also have the advantage of being able to restart with well written code based on experience instead of constantly having to either modify base code (that's taking a chance) or having to use clumsy workarounds because of the short comings of the current base.  By the Developers own admission, if they had to do it all over again, the base code would not be the mess it is now.  Take all the GUI code as an example.  The primary developer doesn't want to touch it because of the mess it's in.  That being the case, starting from scratch would seem reasonable.  Throw the old code out the Window.
AutoIt3 is in no way compatable with AutoIt2 so why would anyone worry about  AutoIt4 being compatable with AutoIt3?  There is no need for that and new goals can be set at the time development is started so they know what will have to be done.  Take the new COM code as an example.  It broke a lot of UDF's which had to be fixed.  As far as I remember I only have one UDF using COM at all so it's no big deal.  I don't use or support that UDF anymore so I'll just remove it from my site.
Speaking of my AutoIt site(s) stay tuned for major changes.  The way I'm looking at it right now is this.
My AutoIt online help site will be taken down and temporarily replaced with a re-direct to the official online help site so you won't have the navigation abilities any longer.  That will probably happen within the next couple of days.  The main AutoIt site will undergo major changes.  All that will remain is a list of links to the actual script files and any compiled apps including the PCRE Toolkit.

I still don't have enough time for much forum activity (see the previous post on this blog) and I think with the way things are going right now there is a good chance that I won't be bothered even signing in for much longer.  I have too many things on the go to be worrying about other peoples attitudes and whether or not I might be stepping on thier toes.
Remove a Developers moderator priveledges and I might reconsider, remove the developer and I will probably reconsider.  For now that's all I intend to say about the subject.
Feel free to comment; you won't hurt my feelings at all and it won't change my feelings towards you if I have any.  Here, unlike the AutoIt forums we do have freedom of speech and I'm always willing to listen to a reasonable argument.

My absence from the forum

Many of you have noticed that I have not been very active in the forums recently and a couple have speculated that it has something to do with a couple of  other forum members.  That is totally incorrect.  I've been absent for personal reasons and simply don't have the time to spend there these days.

Those members that I'm close to already know the gory details and the others don't need to know.

I will return to my former posting frequency as time and circumstances permit.

My Forum activity

You may have noticed that I have not been quite as active in the forums recently and that all boils down to the following.
Life has simply gotten way to busy again and yes I did that to myself.  I'm officially retired but since that happened I've opened what was to be a small company that would keep me busy for a few hours a week.  The idea being that I could take off whatever time I felt like taking off.  Telling customers "Sorry; I wont be doing any work for the next week or month."  It just didn't work out that way.  The small company now has 3 divisions and the only part of retirement that I have is no employees to manage.
Therefore I have found it necessary to curtail my forum activity a bit.  I usually just do a fast drive-by and perhaps answer a post or two.  The only reason I even get the time to do that is because the forums are set as one of my home pages so everytime I have to use the internet for any reason the forum page will open so I do a quick browse of some of them.  I usually just mark the rest off as read.
I will hopefully get back to my previous participation levels but it is going to take a while to get caught up with my current load.

More ranting

It appears that Admin is getting some of the new forum problems fixed, that was to be expected.  The preview thread feature is nice if it was implemented in another way.  It still causes an annoying distraction when you run the mouse up and down the page and I like many others use the mouse to follow what we are reading (one of the reasons I don't like [autoit] tags) so it causes the images to pop on and off as well as a very slight difference in the style for the affected thread.

The one I object most to is the Share This "feature" (read as "crap").  None of the forums seem to be immune from that issue so that means in theory that even material in the private forums could be shared on very public Social networking sites.  I'm in favor of eliminating all those sites never mind sharing anything on them and yet some idiot can come along and share my posts with the world on a whim, yes even though some of the material was classed as private.  At this point the thought has even crossed my mind to just remove all my posts and pack it in for good.  For now I'm settling for perhaps reading a bit but not posting anything and that's the way it is going to stay as long as Share This remains.  I'm going to be too busy to participate for a while anyway and this just frees up a bit of time so in the end it will work out at my end.

Forum upgrade?

Well it happened again, the forums get performing almost smoothly and we get another upgrade to break them again.  Okay, Admin spotted the problem with code tags and put a temporary fix in place.  That was good because without at least the text code the forums are of little value.  But a quick scan through the forums reveals other problems (not associated with Admins efforts) brought on by the new upgrade.  as far as I can tell at this point all it does is add more crap to the forum pages, some of which is broken, and all of it is crap that I for one, don't need and more importantly don't want.  I see absolutely no value in the social network sites and even less value in the forums having links to share on said social network sites.  That boils down to more clutter on the forums.  There seems to be some king of an image which is supposed to appear at each post as you move the cursor up and down the page.  Who knows what that image should be because it doesn't appear but having something follow my mouse up and down the screen is just too distracting.  I've made a post asking that someone inform me by Instant Message when the problems are rectified.  That brings it down to a very limited few who know how to contact me, and I indicated that I will be back when the forums are fixed or even rolled back.  I certainly hope there is no costs associated with these upgrades because the last couple have been more trouble than they are worth at any price.  For now, I'm gone.  I've had enough of this over the years, and as much as I enjoy being active in the forums, I see no reason to spend time in a site that is just going to annoy me.  Thanks to all who have supported me over the years and I hope to someday meet up with you again, and a special thanks to the AutoIt developers, past and present, for their efforts.

I will continue to blog here periodically and I will continue development of the PCRE Toolkit but there will be no notification on the forums about any updates.  They will be announced here as soon as the download file is changed on my site.
Goodbye all, at least temporarily.