Detect mouse highlight

[byronsmith]

Hi All,

Very quick question, I've searched the forums for my term but nothing stands out from any of the posts.

I'm trying to figure out how to detect when I've highlighted a word on any application.

I don't want to automatically highlight it, just to be clear but upon moving my mouse over this WORD it will begin to highlight it. Is there a way that I can detect when highlighting has began and how to retrieve what it is that is currently being highlighted.

If there some DLL call I could use?

Sorry for the vagueness but I'm not sure how else to explain it?

Regards

Byron

[Melba23]

byronsmith,

"Vague" is exactly the word for that question!

how to detect when I've highlighted a word on any application

Do you want to detect when your mouse is over highlighted text as this extract from your post suggests

upon moving my mouse over this WORD it will begin to highlight it

or do you want to highlight a particular word just by moving the mouse over it as this second extract seems to request?

M23

[byronsmith]

M23,

Lets try simplify this ha ha.

On this very sentence, if you put your mouse over this X, hold your left mouse button and begin dragging your mouse to either the right you'll notice the sentence will being to highlight in blue (using Windows 7). I want to detect when this has began.

Does that clear it up a little more?

Regards

Byron

[Melba23]

byronsmith,

Does that clear it up a little more?

Limpid in its clarity - and this is how you might do it:

expandcollapse popup

#include <GUIConstantsEx.au3>
#Include <GuiEdit.au3>
#include <Misc.au3>

$dll = DllOpen("user32.dll")

$sMsg = "Highlighting"

$hGUI = GUICreate("Test", 500, 500)

$hEdit = GUICtrlCreateEdit("This is a chunk of text", 10, 10, 480, 300)

$hLabel = GUICtrlCreateLabel("", 10, 330, 200, 20)

GUISetState()

While 1

    Switch GUIGetMsg()
        Case $GUI_EVENT_CLOSE
            DllClose($dll)
            Exit
    EndSwitch
    
    ; If mouse pressed and we have not yet started highlighting
    If _Ispressed("01", $dll) And GUICtrlRead($hEdit) <> $sMsg Then
        ; Check if we are indeed highlighting
        $aSel = _GUICtrlEdit_GetSel($hEdit)
        If $aSel[0] <> $aSel[1] Then
            ; If we are - tell us unless we already were
            If GUICtrlRead($hLabel) <> $sMsg Then GUICtrlSetData($hLabel, $sMsg)
        Else
            ; If not - stop telling us
            GUICtrlSetData($hLabel, "")
        EndIf
    EndIf

WEnd

All clear?

M23

Edit: Typnig!

Edited December 10, 2010 by Melba23

[byronsmith]

yes, exactly, well almost exactly.

I'm looking to detect this on say a normal notepad or web page.

But you've pointed me in the right direction and so I'll have a crack at it myself.

Thank you so much!

Byron

[byronsmith]

Ok so I finally got a chance to have a crack at this however this isn't going to work with that function GetSel as that only gives me the starting and ending points and not the actual text.

Also, I think this can only be done on the CtrlEdit on a create GUI.

Is there anyway I can determine the highlighted text as it's highlighting but on any window that is active i.e Firefox, Notepad, Outlook etc?

Regards

Byron

[byronsmith]

At a guess, I think I need to retrieve the handle of the active window.

$handle = WinGetHandle ("[ACTIVE]")

Then using a similar function like this:

$selection = _GUICtrlWindow_GetSel($handle)

Which should produce the results but as the text not the character position

MsgBox(4096, "Handle", $selection )

Edited December 15, 2010 by byronsmith

[Melba23]

byronsmith,

This will tell you what you have highlighted (highlit?) in any app but you have to release the mouse button to get the value to show:

HotKeySet("{ESC}", "On_Exit")
Func On_Exit()
    Exit
EndFunc

ClipPut("")
$sCurrText = ""

While 1
    ; Copy what is highlighted
    Send("^c")
    ; Read what was collected
    $sText = ClipGet()
    If $sText <> $sCurrText Then
        $sCurrText = $sText
        ConsoleWrite($sText & @CRLF)
    EndIf

    Sleep(10)
WEnd

I am working on it.

M23