AutoHotkey Community

Guest · Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2005 6:12 pm Post subject: On screenboard feature re

Very nice work on this onscreenkeyboard.
However there are two things that I would like help on making.

The keyboard doesnt display more than one keys pressed and i need this to work for a project i am working on.
Then, would it be possible to also have the mouse click display?

I am making video tutorials on how to learn a 3d program and it would be very useful.
Thanks

Chris · Site Admin Joined: 02 Mar 2004 Posts: 10474

I checked the on-screen keyboard script and unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an easy way to make it indicate that more than one key is down simultaneously. This is because the displayed keys are actually buttons, and the OS doesn't seem to allow more than one button to be down-and-focused at the same time.

A possible workaround is to redesign the script to use bordered text controls instead of buttons, which would allow a border or other edge-effect to be drawn around multiple controls simultaneously (and later removed when the corresponding keys are released).

peejay · Joined: 04 Mar 2005 Posts: 40 Location: Netherlands

Maybe you could use images as well (two images for each key: one pressed, one unpressed).

At least, I suppose images used in a GUI are added to the executable during the compilation? I haven't really gone down that alley yet...

>>> Update: won't work. See Chris' answer.
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Chris · Site Admin Joined: 02 Mar 2004 Posts: 10474

peejay · Joined: 04 Mar 2005 Posts: 40 Location: Netherlands

Laszlo · Joined: 14 Feb 2005 Posts: 4065 Location: Pittsburgh

Why is the picture file loading a problem? You only need two: button-up and button-down. You can put the characters on the top of them. If any extra file is prohibited, you can use narrow GroupBoxes to draw rectangular images, like buttons.

Chris · Site Admin Joined: 02 Mar 2004 Posts: 10474

I think that would work. Anyone can feel free to modify the on-screen keyboard script with something like that.

By the way, I recently changed it to re-enable the tab key visualization because somewhere along the way, the bug that prevented it from working was fixed.

Laszlo · Joined: 14 Feb 2005 Posts: 4065 Location: Pittsburgh

Box test

The height of a GroupBox is funny: 0 height is given as 10. If the height is specified as 9, it gives a negative fold over, and the result is a 2 pixel wide dark line. Let's call it black. If the height is 11, we get a 2 pixel wide light gray line, what we can call white. On the other hand, the width of a GroupBox folds over at 2 pixels, so width 1 gives a black vertical line, width 3 gives a white vertical line. We can draw boxes by appropriately positioning them. The top-left box in the Gui window (drawn by the script below) imitates a pressed down button. Observe, however, that the corners are not perfect. Still, these lines can be used to draw complex buttons with some 3D effects.

For drawing rectangular buttons it is enough to add two GroupBoxes in the right order, with their sides offset by 2 pixels. The results are buttons in recognizable up or down position, shown in the top row of the Gui window, the middle and right boxes. These provide the best we can achieve.

On high resolution screens wider boarders look better. Three offset GroupBoxes give the result shown in the Gui window: the lower second and third buttons.

Unfortunately, the old style line drawing characters are not part of the ANSI character set. If you want to use text characters to draw lines, only the "_" and "|" are available. Using them requires each piece to be positioned carefully, and we cannot be sure if another PC with slightly different font metrics will show the lines correctly. But they can be 100% black or white, or any other color you like. In the second row of the Gui window drawn by the script below the pieces are joined (except at the corners, where overlapping parts are covered), assuming the Windows 2000 character set, 1600x1200 screen resolution, large system fonts. Your mileage will definitely vary, but you can add highlighting to some parts of your graphic.

Laszlo · Joined: 14 Feb 2005 Posts: 4065 Location: Pittsburgh

I found the reason, why the GroupBox height wraps around 10 pixels: it tries to leave room for the description text and the default character size is 10 pt. To make the behavior more consistent, specify the smallest font, 1pt before drawing horizontal lines. You can set it back to 10 pt afterwards. It would change the first 4 lines in the script above to