Which kind of can be read?

[Guest Kronzky]

It seems that AutoIt can read some text areas of Windows application, but not others.

Is there a general rule as to what is compatible?

If I, for example, open the AutoIt help file, I get no text whatsoever. In Outlook I may see a few button captions, and in other apps I may get everything.

So far I've only used the AU3_Spy program to evaluate the capabilities. Is the actual scripting language more powerful, or will AU3_Spy give me a pretty good idea of what's possible?

[Wolvereness 0]

As the helpfile states, there is no 'general rule'. Sometimes you can see text, sometimes you can't.

Many of it is dependant on what kind of controls that there are. Usually they are basic Win controls like the ones in autoit. Some programs make their 'own' kind of controls (that don't behave normal rules) like Internet Explorer (the helpfile has internet explorer engine).

[Blue_Drache 260]

There are creative workarounds for most anything though.

If you can't directly read the text in a window, try a screen scrape. This method works well in DOS style boxes, telnet type sessions, AS400 emulators and others.

Need some text from a webpage for a conditional test? Try the InetGet() function in the latest beta version and rip the page out of your local cache.

These are just two good workaround examples. I'm sure there's tons more that are usable with a DLLCall() or two! Experiment and have fun!