Thanks for creating this, good to have this stuff written down so it's handy when I create a proper README for the project 🙂
First of all, I want to make it clear that EasyCodeIt will not be a drop in replacement for AutoIt, although I will try to maintain as much backward compatibility as possible. So there is a good chance that "general purpose" scripts without platform-specific features will work without many modifications, but anything like GUI or GUI automation will not be supported out of the box.
genius257 What AutoIt3 version are this project targeting initially and how will future versions of AutoIt3 be handled, in regards to feature support?
There is no hard target to which we will 100% comply, as I have mentioned in my preface, the general idea is to maintain as much backward compatibility as possible, including support for any new features in AutoIt which aren't platform specific. Basically anything tied to the core language will be ported... unless they start adding something like a complicated class system 😈
genius257 Will EasyCodeIt have built in functions/functionality, not supported in AutoIt3?
Yes, I already have a few neat enhancements in mind 😉
(Spoiler Alert: Multi-threading is not completely out of the question)
genius257 and will this end up being reflected via an alternative file extension?
Of course! The idea is that I will make up an arbitrary file extension and give it "official status", ideally all compliant EasyCodeIt scripts will use it instead of .au3, but usage of .au3 for scripts which can also work in both AutoIt will also be encouraged.
Technically though, it doesn't really matter, the compiler/interpreter should not depend on the file extension except for something like enabling AutoIt-specific quirks for .au3 in case some of our new features break compatibility.