14 replies to this topic

[YetAnotherSuperhero]

I'm stumped...

I'm trying to get some text that is selected (in, word, on the internet, etc.) WITHOUT using the clipboard.

How do I do this?

Thanks

[adabo]

PostMessage / SendMessage perhaps? In conjunction with EM_GETSELTEXT.

[YetAnotherSuperhero]

Thanks for the reply, but I'm still sort of new to this...

I have NO idea how to use this...

[adabo]

Rajat made a nice tutorial for using windows messages. Also study the examples in the PostMessage / SendMessage section.

Feel free to ask if you need further assistance. It does get a bit tricky, with MSDN's lack of documentation for messages.

[YetAnotherSuperhero]

Awesome, I'll read up.

Thanks again!

[sumon]

For most purposes, why not using the Clipboard? Given that you restore it afterwards, that is. Someone (Learning One?) has a nice Get Selected Text function, GST().

[nimda]

For most purposes, why not using the Clipboard? Given that you restore it afterwards, that is. Someone (Learning One?) has a nice Get Selected Text function, GST().

sumon has an excellent point here. Not only is the clipboard fast, but it works in places where messages don't.
The clipboard can be restored, so I don't see any reason to not use it, only reasons to not use SendMessage.

[adabo]

Is it when we don't see a reason for something that we give up helping finding a solution?

[YetAnotherSuperhero]

Yeah, the reason I can't use the clipboard is that sometimes a program will give me the clipboard cannot be accessed (or something like that).

[adabo]

Ah. Yes, that's certainly a reason to find an alternative. I figured your question was specific for a reason

[sumon]

Is it when we don't see a reason for something that we give up helping finding a solution?

Based on the first post, there was no indication as to why the non-clipboard request.

If someone needs basic help, but does not realize which kind of help he/she needs, it is better to help them in a way that is actually useful than to (sometimes in vain) try to help them in a far too advanced way.

For example, if I saw someone ask "Hey, how can I make a script in C++ that lets me type "I am the king of the world" when I press windows+k?", I would tell them to use Autohotkey for the task instead. If someone on the other hand described a problem where AHK was clearly not the appropiate solution (let's say they were making an application and wanted to implement a specific function that would be easier to implement in AHK, but the program was already in another language...), then I would of course simply not reply.

Answer 'nuff?

[adabo]

@sumon: Agreed. No sense in wasting time As for me making assumptions, I don't mind. I have too much time on my hands, so I don't mind going with my instinct (even if it is a waste) on first post. I'm also bi-polar and will probably go months without helping here. So I do what I can while I can.

[Solar]

Using the clipboard is going to be your most reliable solution due to wanting to use it for multiple applications. However, you can set up cases to get text from specific control types and have the clipboard option as a backup.

Here's an example that gets text from edit controls using ControlGet. It has a clipboard backup for non-edit types:

WinActive("A") ; sets last found window
ControlGetFocus, ctrl
if (RegExMatch(ctrl, "A)Edit\d+"))
    ControlGet, text, Selected,, %ctrl%
else {
    clipboardOld := Clipboard
    Send, ^c
    if (Clipboard != clipboardOld) {
        text := Clipboard
        Clipboard := clipboardOld
    }
}
MsgBox % text

[sumon]

@sumon: Agreed. No sense in wasting time As for me making assumptions, I don't mind. I have too much time on my hands, so I don't mind going with my instinct (even if it is a waste) on first post. I'm also bi-polar and will probably go months without helping here. So I do what I can while I can.

Besides, it might be fun to come up with a solution to the requested problem instead of just giving basic advice.

Seems Solar has some nice advice too.

[Saruman]

As for a reason not to use the clipboard, I have found a use-case for those who assumed that since they can't think of a use-case, one must not exist:

 

Suppose you wanted to copy all the lines from a QuickBooks invoice into an Excel spreadsheet (AHK could be a great way to overcome Intuit's vendor lock-in). Using AutoHotKey, you can copy each line into Excel using the Clipboard. There is only one problem: There's no way for AHK to tell when the end of the QuickBooks invoice has been reached.

 

You could try to stop copying when you've copied a blank line, but QuickBooks puts a stop to this: If you try to copy a blank line, QuickBooks simply ignores the ^C input, so the Clipboard will not become empty. Instead, it'll still have whatever was on the Clipboard before.

 

If you could look at the active selection without needing to get QuickBooks to copy it to the Clipboard, you could check if that selection was empty or nonexistent, and use that to terminate the loop, but there is absolutely no way to achieve this using just the Clipboard.

 

So, how do we get the selected text without relying on the Clipboard?