AutoHotkey Community

[Nemroth]

In a precedent wish topic I was asking to a GetMessage function, as I tried to get screens from a Windows CICS (IBM 3270) emulator.

The class of the view control, as given by Windows Spy, was :

Afx:400000:202b:10008:6:01

I tried to use the ControlGetText Function with the class
Afx:400000:202b:10008:6:01
and with the class
Afx`:400000`:202b`:10008`:6`:01

... Nothing to do to get the text of the control.

So I searched what can be an "Afx" control, as I saw an other Afx control on SuperEdi (same problem same failure...) and so I thinked they can be other controls of this type on other programs.

on MSDN, I found this page :

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/vcmfc98/html/vccontn070mfcwindowclassnames.asp

An Afx control is a view/split control of a program developped in MFC under Visual C++, if I understand well (I know AHK is developped in Visual C++ too, I don't know if the MFC are used).

Perhaps there may be a big amount of programs developped in MFC...

In this MSDN page there are too some explanation :
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/vcmfc98/html/_mfcnotes_tn020.asp
in wich you can read : "The MFC library also uses the "IDW_" prefix as a specialized form of control IDs (that is, instead of "IDC_"). These IDs are assigned to child windows such as views and splitters by the framework classes. MFC implementation IDs are prefixed with "AFX_"."

And on these pages too !!!....
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/vcmfc98/html/_mfc_afxregisterwndclass.asp

And these ones too !!!!!
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/vcmfc98/html/_mfc_cwnd.3a3a.createex.asp

I don't know how to program in C++, nor in Visual C++, and no more with MFC. If I can extend AHK this way that may be usefull, and I would be happy. But I don't know how to do that (for the moment I hope) ....

I understand very well that to handle the Afx controls with AHK must be considered to have a very low priority, but as in the Planned Features there is

[Chris]

Thanks for researching that. I explored your links and some did some other web searches.

First of all, AutoHotkey does not use MFC -- and even if it did, I doubt that doing so would give it any special access to the controls of other apps that use MFC.

Based on my research and yours, its seems that enhancing ControlGetText to get text from these controls would be extremely difficult. However, the research also indicates that often Control-c will copy the text from some of these controls. Have you tried this approach? It might require that the control momentarily get focus -- but maybe not. Perhaps you can do a ControlSend of ^c directly to the control in question (perhaps first sending a Control-a to "select all", if appropriate).

I would normally suggest using Winspector Spy as discussed in Rajat's Message Tutorial, but the info below suggests that is unlikely to work in this case. It seems that the Control-c technique is the most likely approach. If that fails, you might consider using a tool such as Kleptomania to OCR the graphics into text format. I've tried this program in the past and it does seem to work pretty well if the text is in a standard font.


Below are quotes from the only relevant link discovered on Google at
http://visualbasicforum.com/showthread.php?t=149804

[Nemroth]

OK. It's a pity but never mind.

I use Select All - Copy and it works fine but it's a little slowly (The problem comes from the emulator, not from AHK) and makes the screen "flashing"

The information in quotes is very interesting, thanks.

I think I will wait until my boss buy a most recent version of the emulator to use an other way to take teh screen content than by the clipboard...

The Afx controls seems to be old ones...

Top get the screen content, I use the following code :