February 5, 2009

Twitter – What, Why, How?

Filed under: General, Web/Tech — Marcus Tettmar @ 2:20 pm

If you’re one of those who has heard of Twitter but just doesn’t quite “get it” yet you should find Scott Hanselman’s How To Twitter – First Steps and a Twitter Glossary useful. It explains what Twitter is, why it’s useful and how to tweet.

I didn’t get it at first. I wasn’t quite sure what I would get out of it. Most people who now use Twitter regularly were probably the same to begin with. Now I realise how useful it is. I follow friends, people and companies that I find interesting and I want to stay up to date with. I follow news sites like the BBC and CNN. I probably get most of my news via Twitter now (In our house the TV seems to be permanently tuned to Nick Jr these days!). Most of the bloggers I read now tweet their blog updates, so I no longer need to monitor their RSS feeds.

It’s useful. It’s fun too. Even if you don’t have anything to say, you can get a lot out of following people that interest you. And, as Scott says, the nice thing is if you want to respond you can just jump in and reply to anyone.

So if you’ve been wondering what all the fuss is about, read Scott’s blog post, jump in and join the conversation. You can start by following me. My twitter ID is http://twitter.com/marcustettmar 🙂

Generating Random Characters and Strings

Filed under: Scripting — Marcus Tettmar @ 1:10 pm

Macro Scheduler has a Random function which will give you a random number between a specified range. Every now and then I am asked how you can create a random character or random character string.

The solution is to use VBScript’s Chr function which returns the character for the specified Ascii code. So we can use Random to get a random number within the required Ascii range, and then use Chr to get the corresponding character. There are a few examples in the forums, such as this one.

I was recently asked how to generate a random character from A to Z. Here’s my response:

Look at the ASCII table: http://www.asciitable.com/

Let’s look at upper case only first:

A is ascii code decimal 65
Z is ascii code decimal 90

So if we want a random character from A-Z inclusive we want to get a random number in that range (65 to 90).

Clearly it’s a range of 26. Random gives a value from 0 to range-1. So:

Random>26,random_number

So to get that into our range we clearly need to add it to 65, because the ascii range begins at 65 for “A”:

Let>ascii_code=65+random_number

Now we have an ascii code in the required range. So now use VBScript’s Chr function which returns the corresponding character for the ascii code:

VBEval>chr(%ascii_code%),random_char

So, in long form:

Random>26,random_number
Let>ascii_code=65+random_number
VBEval>chr(%ascii_code%),random_char

Or, shorter version:

Random>26,random_number
VBEval>chr(%random_number%+65),random_char

That will give you a random character between A and Z inclusive.

If you want lower case then the range is 97 – 122. There are some characters in between. So if you want to mix lower case and upper case, you could either look at the entire range, discarding any results that appear between the two, or throw a coin (Random>2) to determine whether to do the upper case range or the lower case range, or, I think simpler, randomly convert to lower case, e.g.:

Random>26,random_number
VBEval>chr(%random_number%+65),random_char

Random>2,UpperOrLower
If>UpperOrLower=0
  VBEval>LCase("%random_char%"),random_char
Endif

MessageModal>random_char

Remember, to use VBScript you need a VBSTART/VBEND block in your script, even if it is empty. Stick it at the top. So the whole example script becomes:

VBSTART
VBEND

Random>26,random_number
VBEval>chr(%random_number%+65),random_char

Random>2,UpperOrLower
If>UpperOrLower=0
  VBEval>LCase("%random_char%"),random_char
Endif

MessageModal>random_char

February 2, 2009

T-Shirt Winners for January 2009

Filed under: Announcements — Marcus Tettmar @ 11:02 am

Well I only announced the new forum reputation system on the 21st Jan, but I did say that awards will be made based on the previous month. So it was a short month last month. The top three reputation point winners, and the points awarded were as follows:

mtettmar: 21
Me_again: 13
Bob Hansen: 10

Now, clearly I’m excluding myself from this promo (I already have a T-shirt anyway) so T-shirts (or mug, or mousemat) go to Me_again and Bob Hansen. Congratulations, and thanks for your contributions.

Winners: please PM/email me with your requirements/preferred size and mailing address.

January 30, 2009

Macro Scheduler 11.1.03 Update

Filed under: Announcements — Marcus Tettmar @ 10:45 am

Macro Scheduler 11.1.03 Update is now available with the following fixes:

– Compiled exes with NOSTOPKEY set will show APP_TITLE in tray icon hint
– Fixed: Editor code folding/autoinsertion confused by nested subroutines
– Fixed: Step Over (Shift-F8) not working

Registered Downloads/Upgrades | Evaluation Downloads | New License Sales

My apologies for another update so soon after the last. Thanks to Keith for reporting the issue with nested subroutines confusing the editor’s syntax highlighter, and to Tim for spotting that Step Over wasn’t working. These issues probably don’t effect 99.9% of people, but for Keith and Tim they were a big pain. It was tempting to just provide the fix to them rather than interrupt everyone with yet another update announcement. But there could be others out there with the same issues and I’d rather everyone benefited. So here it is.

January 29, 2009

We Eat Our Own Dogfood

Filed under: General — Marcus Tettmar @ 3:54 pm

I just read this post on the Coding Horror blog and it struck a chord:

In software circles, dogfooding refers to the practice of using your own products. It was apparently popularized by Microsoft:

The idea originated in television commercials for Alpo brand dog food; actor Lorne Greene would tout the benefits of the dog food, and then would say it’s so good that he feeds it to his own dogs. In 1988, Microsoft manager Paul Maritz sent Brian Valentine, test manager for Microsoft LAN Manager, an email titled “Eating our own Dogfood” challenging him to increase internal usage of the product. 

We certainly eat our own dogfood here at MJT Net Ltd. Macro Scheduler was written to solve a pain I had at a previous job many years ago, and I still use it day in day out. Not only is it used for automating various business processes within the company, it is also used for creating small tools and for building parts of other projects.

But what struck me most about the coding horror article was this SawStop video:

It’s an impressive video. Perhaps the reason it struck a chord with me is that my father is a very keen woodworker and has a workshop full of very dangerous machinery which makes me wince every time I step inside. For some reason all I can think of when I watch him work is which limb is going to fly off first!

The creator actually did stick his own finger in a SawStop on camera, apparently on the Discovery Channel show Time Warp, but I can’t locate any web video of it.

Now, THAT is eating your own dogfood!

January 28, 2009

Macro Scheduler 11.1.02 Update

Filed under: Announcements — Marcus Tettmar @ 11:31 am

Macro Scheduler 11.1.02 Update is now available with the following fixes:

– Fixed: Access Violation when closing dialog editor if dialog has a MainMenu
– Fixed: Clicking “type a hotkey” checkbox in macro properties didn’t cause warning to save changes if nothing else changed
– Fixed: Compile Includes not including scripts specified with %SCRIPT_DIR% when compiled from Editor
– Fixed: Press End inside a SRT called End would fool the lexer into thinking the SRT ended at Press End
– Added: When typing SRT in editor, End is added automatically with SRT name.

Registered Downloads/Upgrades | Evaluation Downloads | New License Sales

January 27, 2009

Modal vs Non-Modal – Windows, Not Jazz

Filed under: Automation, General, Scripting — Marcus Tettmar @ 11:07 am

Every now and then, in the forums and in emails to us, there seems to be some confusion over what these terms mean.  As a developer I take these terms for granted, but anyone else, depending on their walk of life, might think they refer to some kind of Modal Jazz; something to do with a modal matrix used in linear algebra; or a type of auxiliary verb used to indicate modality.  

I sometimes need to remind myself that not everyone coming to Macro Scheduler and Windows Automation in general are familiar with geeky software terms.  I can’t tell you much about modal jazz, linear algebra or auxiliary verbs, but I can do my best to set to rest any confusion about Modal and Non-Modal windows.

Modal Windows

When a window is modal it remains active and focused until the user has finished with it and dismisses it.  While it is active no other windows of the same application can be activated.  A modal window is therefore normally a child window.  The user needs to interract with it before control can be returned to the parent application. In effect the parent application is locked and nothing proceeds until the modal window is closed.

You’ll find a good definition of Modal Windows on Wikipedia, here.

Non-Modal Windows

So a non-modal window is the opposite. While it is active you can still activate other windows. The user can switch between windows of the same application. The window being active does not prevent the rest of the application from continuing.

Modal Dialogs

In Macro Scheduler you can create custom dialogs. These can be modal or non-modal to the script. When we refer to a modal dialog what we mean is that once the dialog is displayed, the script halts until the user closes the dialog. Script execution is paused until the dialog is dismissed. The script cannot do any processing while the modal dialog is active. A modal dialog is displayed with the Show command, with a return variable specified, in which the “modal result” of the dialog is reported, corresponding to which button was pressed to close the dialog.

Non-Modal Dialogs

A dialog can be made to be non-modal. In which case the script carries on even after it has displayed the dialog. The user can interact with the dialog while the script continues to perform other tasks. The developer would need to write code to retrieve the state of the dialog and the data that has been entered into it. Usually this would need to take place in a loop. A non-modal dialog is displayed with the Show command, with the return variable omitted. Inside the loop we would retrieve the state and data of the dialog with the GetDialogAction command, and set it with ResetDialogAction.

In this post I have concentrated on definitions rather than going into detail on how you can create and control custom dialogs. That is a subject for another post and you will find more information in the help file and online help. Some dialog examples ship with Macro Scheduler and you’ll find more in the forums.

January 23, 2009

Screen Scraping with Macro Scheduler

Filed under: Automation, General, Scripting — Marcus Tettmar @ 11:50 am

What is Screen Scraping?

Screen Scraping is a term used to describe the process of a computer program or macro extracting data from the display output of another application.  Rather than parsing data from the database or data files belonging to an application, Screen Scraping pulls the data from the screen itself, extracting data that was intended to be displayed to the end-user as opposed to data designed for output to another application or database.  

Screen Scraping is necessary when there is a need to access the information displayed by the application but there is no method provided to access it behind the scenes.  The database or data files may not be accessible, or may be undocumented or proprietary and therefore cannot be parsed easily; the costs associated with interacting with the database may be too high; or the license agreement or warrenty prohibits it.  In the case of legacy systems that are no longer supported there may be no knowledge of the data structures, or the technology used is no longer compatible with current technology.  In these cases we are resorted to extracting the data from the screen – from the windows of the application.

The term Screen Scraping probably originates from the era of computer terminals when you could connect the terminal output of a computer to an input port on another and therefore record the screen data.  

Screen Scraping Methods

There are a number of ways we can retrieve information from the screen using Macro Scheduler, depending on the type of application the data is in.

Screen Scraping Web Applications

Applications like Macro Scheduler’s WebRecorder can access the data and objects inside an Interner Explorer window and can therefore be used to extract the data.  Technically speaking I would not call this screen scraping since WebRecorder is using an API interface provided by Internet Explorer, but the process of extracting information from web sites is commonly refered to as Screen Scraping.  With WebRecorder we can use the ExtractTag wizard to create code that extracts the text from a particular element in the page.   While WebRecorder is the easiest way to do it, it is also possible to automate IE and extract data from web pages by using VBScript. The following forum posts may help:

Automate Internet Explorer with OLE/ActiveX
Automate web forms with IE
HTTP GET and POST using VBscript

Screen Scraping Microsoft Office Applications

Microsoft Office Applications, like Internet Explorer, have a COM interface that allows scripts to manipulate them and access the data held within them.  Again, not really scraping data from the screen itself, as you are getting it directly from a programming interface.    There are a number of examples in the forums and blog archives and also some sample scripts that come with Macro Scheduler which demonstrate how to automate Office applications and retrieve data from them.  

Working with Excel

Screen Scraping Regular Windows Applications

Most other applications don’t offer a scripting interface like MS Office or Internet Explorer.  This is where we really need to work directly with the screen.   There are a number of ways we can do this kind of Screen Scraping with Macro Scheduler.

The Text Capture Functions

Macro Scheduler includes some Text Capture functions which can be used to extract text from a given window, rectangular screen area or screen point.  These functions use low level system hooks which monitor applications calling the various “TextOut” functions that Windows uses to output text to the screen.  By doing so they are able to capture this text.  The Text Capture functions return the text to  a variable which you can then use as needed.  

However, a few applications don’t use the Windows built-in functions to create and output text.  Don’t worry –Most do, but a few use their own techniques.  When you realise that text on the screen is just a sequence of small dots, if the application programmer decided to build his own routine to assemble text from dots rather than calling the Windows functions which already do that for you, you’re not going to be able to capture it.

The text capture functions and their limitations are explained here.  There is an example application, here, created with Macro Scheduler, which you can use to determine whether or not the text you want to capture can be captured using the text capture functions.

http://www.mjtnet.com/blog/2007/12/12/capturing-screen-text/
http://www.mjtnet.com/blog/2008/01/03/screen-scrape-text-capture-example/

Using the Clipboard for Screen Scraping

If the text you want to capture is selectable then you can use the clipboard to retrieve it.  A Macro Scheduler macro can send the keystrokes necessary to highlight and copy the text to the clipboard and then use the GetClipboard function to retrieve that text to a variable.  This is far less elegant than using the Text Capture functions but might be necessary if the application concerned is not utlising any of the Windows text out functions to create the text.

SetFocus>Notepad*
//Select ALL
Press CTRL
Send>a
Release CTRL
//Copy to clipboard
Press CTRL
Send>c
Release CTRL

//Get and display the data
WaitClipboard
GetClipboard>theData
MessageModal>theData

Screen Scraping via Optical Character Recognition

A final resort might be Optical Character Recognition (OCR). If the text is part of an image file neither the Text Capture or Clipboard methods are going to be able to extract it. But, depending on the quality of the image and the fonts used, OCR might. There are a number of OCR engines that can be used by Macro Scheduler, one of which is part of Microsoft Office. The following posts demonstrate how this can be done:

Screen OCR to Retrieve Otherwise Undetectable Text
Screen OCR – Recognising Graphical Text

More on Screen Scraping.

January 22, 2009

Quick Tip: Determine Path of an Application (Update)

Filed under: General — Marcus Tettmar @ 6:03 pm

When using the RunProgram command in Macro Scheduler to run an app you usually need to know the path (unless it’s a system app already in the path) and executable name. Sometimes it’s not obvious what that is. You might start Microsoft Word, or Internet Explorer several times a day without knowing or caring what its exe name and path is. So when you come to write a macro which calls it how do you find out what it is? Well you might think to right click on the application’s shortcut and look at the properties. But this doesn’t always help. If I click on the MS Access shortcut in my Start menu it seems to point to yet another shortcut. I could locate that shortcut and look at that I suppose, but I’m an impatient kind of guy and don’t like being sent around the houses. No, there’s a quicker way:

  • Start the application if it is not already running.
  • Hit Win-R to get the Run dialog and type msconfig32 and hit Enter
  • In the System Information window expand “Software Environment” and click on “Running Tasks”
  • You will see a list of running processes with their Path shown in the second column

Running Task Location

In Vista you can also do the following:

  • Start the application if it is not already running.
  • Start Task Manager (which you can do quickly by right clicking on the task bar and selecting “Task Manager”).
  • Look down the list (you can sort it by name or description) to find the application.
  • Now you can right click on the application’s entry and select Properties and it will show you it’s location. Or right click and select “Open File Location” to see it in an Explorer window.

The location field in the Properties box of Task Manager can be selected, so you can just copy this to Macro Scheduler.

So, even if you don’t know where an application is installed or what its executable name is, it’s easy to find that out once it’s running.

__

Updated 23/01/09 for an XP solution. Thanks to Dick Lockey for pointing out my Task Manager solution was Vista only.

January 21, 2009

Free T-Shirts for Forum Points

Filed under: Announcements — Marcus Tettmar @ 12:13 pm

The forums now let you give points to other users. Reward those that have helped you, and get points for helping out others. And as an extra reward, the top three earners each month will receive a free MJT Net Gearhead T-Shirt (T-Shirts will go to the three people who earn the most points in the proceeding month). For full details see the announcement in the forum. So log in and start sharing your knowledge now.

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