View Manual, PDF or anything 'always on top' of DCS via autohotkey

So yeah, the kneeboard sure is handy, but it has limitations and is quite cumbersome and a good deal of work even with kneeboard builder if you simply want to superimpose a pdf manual, image or whatever (browser, video player,...) over dcs when running in borderless window mode.

The stuff below is pretty similar to what David_OC posted a while ago for superimposing your browser via a browser plugin.

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=187754

The method below is not program/app specific and should in theory work for.....anything you throw at it.

So windows itself has an 'always on top' functionality, but this is not accesseable unless the program in question supports this, correct me if i am wrong here.

Now, many of you might know the incredible powerful scripting tool autohotkey. With a very simple script autohotkey can make use of window's own always on top functionality and thus make any active window to stay 'always on top'.

At the most basic level i currently use the following script:

#IfWinActive, ahk_exe PDFXCview.exe

#<:: Winset, AlwaysOnTop, toggle

The first line simply states that when the program PDFXCview.exe in my case (you put any filename of whatever program/exe you want to be always on top in it's place) is the active window...

that once i press the key combo defined at the very beginning of line two, to make that window to 'stay always on top'.

#<:: is the key combo i set up right now, but it can be anything that you need to define as per the autohotkey syntax.

With this very basic script, the workflow looks like this:

once you want your pdf viewer to stay on top of your borderless dcs window, you alt+tab and click the pdf viewer and press your key-combo you setup in the autohokey script. You can of course adjust the format and size of your pdf viewer like any other window and place it whereever you want.

Now your pdf viewer is superimosed on top of dcs, and you can still look around your cockpit and click away at your heats content as long as your mouse stays away from the superimposed pdf viewer (or whatever have you).

If you move your mouse over the pdf viewer window and click once you can scroll and normally use that viewer, and dcs becomes unfocused but does not collapse to the windows sidebar, so you can easily click anywhere on the dcs window to make it focused again. To stop whatever you superimposed from being always on simply make it the active window with one click as described directly above and press your script key combo again. Now one more click on the dcs window and dcs gets your undevided attention again.

I reckon autohotkey allows for more advanced and convenient ways like for instance to have a set key combo that superimposes your pdf viewer without the need to first alt+tab and even stop the mouse from focusing on your superimposed window if you clicked on it by accident.

Here are some links to the autohotkey documentation that explains that stuff a bit more:

https://autohotkey.com/board/topic/53249-transparent-andor-always-on-top/

https://www.autohotkey.com/docs/commands/WinSet.htm

The links below are useful for understanding how to set up you key-combo you want your autohotkey script to execute on pressing.

https://www.autohotkey.com/docs/Hotkeys.htm

https://www.autohotkey.com/docs/KeyList.htm

Last but not least; use that stuff at your own risk, you might run your expensive jets into the ground once you start watching youtube or netflix :book: superimposed on route to the AO :doh: