I'm trying to automate some work in a 3rd party application (Cognos) using AutoHotKey. There are two listboxes, and basically you double click on the left box and it populates the box on the right. I want to select 'n' number of items in a particular, specified order. Basically the pseudo-script would be something like:
down 4
doubleclick
up 2
doubleclick
Up & down is not a problem, but I can't get double click to work. I tried two "MouseClick, left" but that requires the mouse to be at the correct position. If this is the solution, how do I move the mouse to the listbox's item that has focus?
And before anyone asks... I tried alternatives to double clicking, such as the enter key, but enter = "ok" since it's technically in a large dialogue box.
If anyone has an alternative to AutoHotKey that'd be appreciated too. I tried VBS & "sendkeys" first, but double click really seemed not do-able.
Thanks
Related
I use conditional block to show different text box prompt when user choose different filter in my first prompt page. Now, I set the text box with same setting(no required, multi-select:yes, multi-line:yes, other are no) and similar filter script in my queries. However, when I run the report, I can't get the same output. My first text box miss right half of text space. How can I fix it? Thanks!
Click here for the first screen shot.
Click here for the second screen shot.
A sample report spec would be helpful but based on the screen shot, one of two things is happening:
The first prompt does not actually have the multi-select option set.
OR
The filter item in the actual query that the first prompt is populating is not multi-select friendly.
An example of #2 would be if you tried to set enable multi-select values but then the filter it is populating into is set to something like:
[table].[field] = ?firstPrompt?
Instead of:
[table].[field] in (?firstPrompt?)
If this isn't the case, definitely edit in a simple sample report specification so we can see more of what you're doing.
I'm trying to activate Hint from control of different application created from delphi upon focus, I'm using hook to identify the focused control, and then use WM_MOUSEMOVE, which I think will activate the Hint of that control, the handle would be the Control itself and the lParam is the Left and Top of the Control. The Control activate the OnMouseMove Event, but the Hint never shows. but when I use SetCursorPos, Hint show, but I need to show the Hint with out the cursor move on that Control. Can you please help me with this? Thank you in advance... by the way I'm using Delphi XE4
Among the really asked question is how to show the hint of a control that resides on another application (i am afraid without hook that application can not be done), the title is "Delphi - Activating the Hint from another control of Application".
First is first: That can be done without knowing what language the other app was done, but it is very complex to put it here (and i am not an expert on such way of coding, also i hate apps that work that way).
Second: The main idea is to hook the other application, search on Google some code of that apps, that can show you a rectangular hole square of the object the mouse is passing over, that application while doing it is iconized (i do not remember the name of it).
Waht such app does: As you move the mouse over the screen it overlays a rectangular over the control that mouse is over, then if you press the key to print screen, that small region is the only thing that goes to clipboard; on of such apps i saw had an extra funcion, they can move such controls if you press cursors on keyboard, also can hide/enable/disable such control... more, it can also make controls that are invisible to be visible, etc... i saw it working on my computer, and hey, for fun it is pretty and to DeBug or get extra things on some apps is also great (make some menús to be visible and enabled and then can use such funtions).
Please, please, understand i am agaist piracy and also against using such apps to let code to be run... some apps need pay for letting some menus enabled, but they have the code there, no need to change EXE to have/use that menus; just using this kind of apps makes that limited apps to be unlimited (just enable or show hidden menus and voila).
Note: To unhide menus, mouse point is not needed to be over the app, can be anywhere and is not moved.
The idea i want to say is: Any app can move, alter any control on any other app (at least on Windows) that is running, so maybe there can be a way to show such hint.
In the past i had use such app (sorry i do not remember the name) for DeBug my own apps, so i do not need to recompile in such cases where something was wrongly hidden, also work with buttons, labels, texts, combos, memos, etc.
Now my small problem is: I just need exactly what title say, but i can not make it to work.
Must be:
Mouse position must be irrelevant (it also must be able to be outside the application)
Just when a button that has focus is pressed with keyboard (Space or Enter) or just after some code somewhere on my application, i want to show the Hint of a specific TEdit for a short period of time.
I did not get Hint to be shown; not unless mouse point is over such TEdit but i want/need mouse pointer to not be over it, neither it to jump to the TEdit.
Idea Conept for that Hint to be shown: After doing some code that changes something, show extra info associated.
Example:
A button with that loads a file using an open dialog, filename is put on a ReadOnly TEdit (so it let user copy the text, but not change it); i want extra info that i punt on .Hint of such TEdit to be shown inmediatly.
That hint use is for not overload window with a lot of fields (TLabels) for showing such file data.
Simple idea: such Hint shows TimeStamp and size of the selected file.
P.D.: Not much related (since i am trying with a normal plain text hint), but hints can also store a full HTML page and with 3rd party tools be shown as an HTMLhint, so they can show a lot info of that file (also its content, etc) in a web based format; as i say i first try with standard plain text hints.
In order to show hint programatically you need to call TApplications ActivateHint method to which you specify the position parameter.
http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/Libraries/XE3/en/Vcl.Forms.TApplication.ActivateHint
Based on position parameter Application automatically finds which controll is at that position and shows its hint.
NOTE: Position parameter screen coordinates in pixels and not your controll coordinates. So you will have to use ClientToScreen method to change your coordinates apropriately.
You can see simple example of how to use this here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/15031208/3636228
Now if you need to do this from another application then you will have to add some comunication mechanizm to these two application so that one could send a proper message to tell the other to show the hint at specific position. But this does require you to be able to change both applications.
EDIT: This works with VCL applications but I'm not sure if it would work with FireMonkey applications.
I'm looking at converting one of our applications to Delphi XE2 and generally take the opportunity to bring it up to date.
One of the features of the application is a StringGrid that displays a number of check marks in a couple of columns. To achieve this the grid is actually 2 aligned grids - the second of which is setup with the font as Wingdings in order to display the check marks.
Am I wrong in thinking that I should be able to use something like a TListView and use the checkmark char (U+2713) alongside the rest of the text... If so how the heck do I do this?
Do I need to set the font to Wingdings for that column? Does this need to be in OnDraw?
Am I barking up the wrong tree...
File->New->VCL Forms application
In the Component Palette, expand the Win32 tab and choose TListView, and drop it on the form.
Right-click the newly added TreeView1, and choose Items Editor... from the context menu.
Click New Item. Type in any text (for instance x Testing, using the 'x' as a placeholder for now).
Start the Windows Character Map application (Start button, type Chara in the search box, or Start->Programs->Accessories->Character Map). Change the font to Arial Unicode MS, and navigate to the character you want (it's in there).
Click the character, and then the Copy button. Switch back to the IDE, select the x placeholder you put in the edit, and hit Ctrl+V to paste the character you just chose from Character Map. You should now see your check mark (or whatever character you chose), followed by Testing.
(The steps above are the two-minute process I followed to find out how to do this, and that quick experiment showed that you could.)
Question:
Can anyone point to an article or code samples anywhere on how to
provide BOTH editing AND range selection in a TStringGrid?
Yes, I KNOW there are third-party grids that do this, but it's
frustrating that the built-in grid lacks this basic capability.
Background:
It's pretty normal to expect to be able to both edit a cell in a grid,
and also to select a range of cells such as for a Copy operation.
As delivered, TStringGrid doesn't do that. It's either/or. In fact, the
docs tell us about the grid Options, "When goEditing is included in
Options, goRangeSelect has no effect".
However, it looks like it may be possible to do editing and rangeselects
in a TStringGrid anyway!!! Through careful use of the mousedown,
mouseup, selectcell and exit events, you can get dang close by switching
editing elements on and off at the right times. But I still don't have
it perfect, and that only covers mouse use, not keyboard changes.
I have not used the TStringGrid for this, so I can't provide a specific answer. But am I right in assuming you can manually (in code) start a cell being edited? That link implies it is possible even if the grid doesn't have goEditing included in its Options. (See below to work around this if this is not true.)
If so, I'd suggest the following approach:
Combined selection and edit behaviour
I find this is a good, Windows-standard-behaviour sort of approach:
Leave the grid in selection mode, so mouse and keyboard interaction selects cells
Trigger a cell being edited yourself, based on certain criteria (I think you are on the way to doing this from what you said in your last paragraph.) There are common ways to trigger editing, and the following criteria are what my programs follow when they do something similar with other controls:
Selection is normal. Ie, click to select, click and drag to multi-select, use the keyboard arrows and Shift or Control to select, etc.
A cell enters edit mode when either:
A cell is selected and the user presses Enter or F2 (F2 is the standard "Rename" or "Edit" shortcut, which works in a number of programs)
The user "slow-double-clicks" on a cell - ie, slow-double-clicks to select and edit, or clicks again, after a pause, on an already-selected cell. This mimics Explorer's behaviour, where if a file is selected and you later click on it, it enters the inline edit/rename mode. To implement this, record when a cell was last clicked (and selected.) If it is clicked again, and if the time is greater than GetDoubleClickTime then they have clicked twice, slowly, and enter edit mode. This allows you to distinguish between the first click to select, a double-click (to perform some kind of action), and a slow second click, to enter edit mode.
I also tend to check the mouse position, so that if an object is slow-double-clicked and it wasn't first selected (ie, this both selects the object and then enters edit mode) I verify the mouse hasn't moved very much. I use GetSystemMetrics to find the double-click distance, and check that the slow double click was within this box. (Because it's not a true doubleclick, I actually check the distance times 2. My action code is:
const int iMAX_MOVE_AMOUNT = ::GetSystemMetrics(SM_CYDOUBLECLK) * 2; (sorry, C++ not Delphi, but should be convertable easily enough!)
but I'm actually not certain if this is completely and utterly 100% to Windows guidelines. In practice users find it works as they expect, though.)
That should let you change between selecting and editing at the appropriate times with both the keyboard and the mouse.
Miscellaneous thoughts
You may find some of this is cleaner and easier to implement by subclassing TStringGrid and creating a new component. That will allow you to implement this in normal code and override the inbuilt behaviour (rather than event handlers) while keeping it invisible to the form code. It will also give you lower-level access to the mouse events or Windows messages than are exposed simply through events such as OnMouseDown. Finally, if there are problems with showing the editor when goEditing is included in Options, this will allow you to change that behaviour. You could also add your own events if you want your code to respond to certain things happening, such as creating an OnBeginEdit event, say.
Creating your own components is normally regarded as an advanced Delphi topic, but it's actually remarkably easy once you know how! This site has a few good topics that will introduce you to the subject in general, and if you go this route and encounter problems, Stack Overflow is of course a good place to ask questions :) The Embarcadero Delphi » VCL » Writing Components newsgroup / forum is also an excellent resource, in fact possibly even better than SO for this specific topic.
Hope that helps!
Yes it's old post, but the problem still exist on Delphi XE3.
To manage this feature I used next "trick" in SelectCell procedure :
if (ARow = StringGridParam.Row) then
begin
StringGridParam.Options:= StringGridParam.Options + [goEditing] - [goRowSelect];
end else begin
StringGridParam.Options:= StringGridParam.Options + [goRowSelect] - [goEditing];
end;
Often I find myself with some text where I want to exclude a certain part of the text, say the first three characters of 40 lines. The fastest way I could think of to do this would be to draw a rectangle and copy the text. I am mostly using Windows, but I am sure grep or something similar could do this with a tiny bit of code. My best way of doing this is to open Command Prompt. Then run "Edit" (yes the good old one). Then paste the text in there (this actually takes a significant amount of time). Then I am able to select the rectangle I am after.
Is there any other editors that support this feature? I am familiar with Notepad++.
You can select a rectangular area to cut/copy in Visual Studio be pressing the Alt key prior to making your selection with the mouse or (Shift +) cursor keys. See How to: Select and Change Text.
The Zeus editor can do keyboard driven column cut/copy and paste.
Also the default Zeus mouse marking is in column mode.
If you use Vim, Ctrl + V will let you select a rectangular block of text.
The documentation says Ctrl + Q will let you do a rectangular select in mswin compatibility.
Emacs supports kill-rectangle (bound to C-x r k by default) and yank-rectagle (C-x r y) to achieve this. Also of possible interest is delete-extract-rectangle (no default binding, and intended for programming use).
You use it by navigating to one corner of the interesting area, hitting C-<space> to set the mark, navigating to the opposite corner, and invoking the desired function.
UltraEdit has a column mode (menu Column/Column Mode, keyboard
shortcut Alt + C). This makes it possible to make block selections, delete, insert column-wise, etc. using only the keyboard (the mouse works too).
For your example: make a zero width selection at column position 1 for the 40 lines and press Delete three times. Or simply make the 3 x 40 block select and press Delete.
You can do this with NEdit (which is available for Windows). Hold down Ctrl and drag the mouse (left-click) to select rectangles.
In Linux, you could also just use cut:
cut -b4- file
It will remove the first three characters from every line and print the result to standard output.
jEdit supports vertical selections (keyboard shortcut is Alt + \). It can also do multiple, non-continuous selections (keyboard shortcut is Ctrl + \). And when you type it affects all selections, so you can edit multiple lines at the same time, or the same line in more than place simultaneously. Or both.
Vertical pasting is also supported. This is a feature I use all the time. It makes editing columns a breeze.
If you have too many lines to select easily, then jEdit's Find And Replace is as good as it gets.
jEdit is a Java application, and so uses more system resources than most editors. But on the other hand it works on most systems, and it has loads of plug-ins to make editing text more efficient.
This can be done using JGSoft's Editpad which has a freeware lite version that is not crippled.
In IntelliJ, go to Edit and then click on Column Selection Mode. Or use the ALT+SHIFT+INSERT shortcut.