One of my clients wants to use a check scanner. They purchased software and have a scanner however they do not want to store any of the data on the workstation the scanner is attached to. I'm wondering if we can utilize RemoteApp to deploy the software? I've built a test of the application being deployed via RemoteApp and it seems to work however I don't have a check scanner to test with. Will I run into driver issues or should this POC work?
Setup a test environment using RemoteApp software works fine however do not have a check scanner to test with.
It should work ok, but it will often depend on the scanner software. Useally these scanners simply type as if the keyboard was being pressed. So you have to place your cursor in the field on the form, and then scan, and it “types in” what the scanner saw. So, you can launch word, or Access or even note pad for this to work. If you are using remote desktop, then this should also work. If the scanner does not type keys as it scans, then you can’t use remote desktop, but in most cases it should.
And in most cases, the field (text box) you scan into likely will need to parse out the bits and parts of the string into separate text boxes.
So given how most scanners work, then you should be ok. So, you install the scanner software on the client side - and all it really does is press keys as if you were typing. So the trick then becomes to ensure that your cursor is in the right text box before you scan.
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Is there a way to detect input areas such as textboxes and checkboxes within an application? I want to label each input area with a number so I can jump between input fields with AHK using my keyboard.
For example: Once the script is activated and active window is Google Chrome, Chrome could have its address bar labeled #1. When I press "1", the cursor will be directed to that area.
I'm basically trying to create a workaround for applications that are not very keyboard friendly.
Most Windows applications use standard windows elements.
For these...
https://autohotkey.com/docs/commands/WinGet.htm - with the ControlList parameter, gets a list of all standard controls.
For those:
https://autohotkey.com/docs/commands/ControlGet.htm - can get the type of control, and
https://autohotkey.com/docs/commands/ControlGetPos.htm - can get position and dimensions of the control.
Some can also be controlled through COM: https://gist.github.com/kheybot/7026077#automation-of-office-applications
Commandline and console programs can sometimes be communicated with directly, using the standard streams (STDIN, STDOUT, STDERR, LPTn, PRN, NUL), or you can communicate with the terminal that displays the program using COM or WSH:
https://gist.github.com/kheybot/7026077#interact-with-command-line
This is important for a lot of legacy data-entry programs.
Browsers (eg Chrome), unfortunately, can't use these heavyweight components, because there may be far too many on a page, but there are other options for communicating with them, such as COM, DDE, etc to communicate with the DOM:
https://gist.github.com/kheybot/7026077#browser-automation
For a web browser, I'd be inclined to go for a hybrid approach, combining AHK-handling of the web browser's input areas (address bar, etc) with a Greasemonkey/Tampermonkey script to handle input fields within the web page itself - the Javascript will be better able to handle input areas using the DOM than any screen-scraping software could. There's also the possibility of using a functional-testing suite like Selenium for automation, and using the browser's plug-in functionality to write an extension to handle its UI.
This would mean that you now have TWO programming problems, of course...
Java applications, Flash applications, HTML5 applications, some graphic design software, and just about all computer games are essentially just graphics, with no way of externally identifying controls.
For these, you have to use basic screen scraping techniques: http://www.autohotkey.com/docs/commands/ImageSearch.htm and http://www.autohotkey.com/docs/commands/PixelSearch.htm to identify specific areas, which can only really be done by individually programming the specific control.
One option for generic detection, though, is to have something that detects shadows (drop shadows, buttonized components, etc) and allows you to tab between and send a click to the components detected that way. Unfortunately, modern flat design meant this won't always work, so you could also try searching for flat-colored rectangles... except sometimes they have curved corners. Because graphic designers hate people.
At this point, you will hopefully see that what you have here is an infinite rabbithole of fractal complexity.
You can make a simple ControlGet solution which doesn't work for a lot of applications you would use regularly... or you can create a hybrid approach that targets many applications individually, while also trying to have a generic solution for unrecognized apps.
If you are creating this for your own use, I'd say aim for making it work with the apps you know and use regularly, and that should be enough.
If you're writing it as accessibility software for others to use, I'd say aim for having it user-configurable for each application: let them control what input element they want to click, and in what order, because auto-detection will never work perfectly, and will only rarely pick the ideal solution.
The answer is yes, if the number of check boxes and their position in the application is fixed and you know on which machine the automation takes place.
Please research ImageSearch on how to locate them from screenshots.
If you know the X/Y position of the checkbox in the window, you can also use PixelGetColor to check if a check is visible or not.
You should also examine your application with the included AutoIt Spy. This program shows you, what it can see in the application window.
To get your labelling, checkout the Gui commands. If you make you gui transparent and don't give focus, you can write labels on top of the application.
I have 2 file signing cards with the same "sponsor" (obviously, the actual "signer" is different between the 2). Until quite recently, I've only been using the one but today I tried using the other. I built my application and signed it using the same process I always use and I downloaded both the .out and the .p7s files the same way I always do, but when the download finishes, I get an error message about the signature not matching.
I was pretty sure that you could use 2 different signing cards as long as the sponsor was the same between them. Am I wrong? What am I missing?
For the record:
This is for a Vx520
My terminal is on the latest OS
I have verified that the sponsor certificate name on the terminal's boot up screen matches the sponsor cert name in the signing tool's diagnostics menu
My terminal also has VMAC and CommServer, but no other programs on it (besides the one I built and am trying to download and run)
When the file signing tool runs, it generates the .p7s file, which is always required, but it also generates a file Certif.crt. This file is not necessary to download to the terminal if you are only using a single signing card, but if you use a second card, you MUST download it along with the .p7s. From what I can tell, this .crt file is what the terminal uses to determine that the sponsors are the same. Once I downloaded the .crt file along with everything else, it worked.
Side note: The tool also generates a SponsorCertif.crt file. I'm not using that nor do I know what scenarios would require it... If you know, please comment below.
I am currently creating a c program that counts all of the keys I press in a day and sorts the key types by amount, so I can tell which ones I press most often. It was more of a side project than anything else but I have become annoyed with the fact that my program doesn't seem to be able to intercept any input to password fields. I suppose this is a good thing, but I have been spending hours looking at documentation and trying to figure how to do this. I am not trying to create any sort of malicious software. Is there a way around this? My program is running as root. I am using the ApplicationServices framework and CGEventRef and the CGEventTapCreate funcion. Should I be using a different framework or struct? Also, is there a difference between kCGHIDEventTap, kCGSessionEventTap, and kCGAnnotatedSessionEventTap? I have tried using each of them and it does not seem to make a difference in my program.
I am running this on OS X 10.9
UPDATE
Apparently I cannot capture keystrokes going to terminal either, which is where I spend most of my time on my laptop. This is a problem.
What you want is fairly complicated and requires a kernel extension. The interprocess communication is also not trivial. Take a look at logKext, specifically logKext.cpp. That project actually logs the keystrokes to an encrypted file. You should be able to pull everything you need from it.
I want to make project for my final year in college.
So someone suggested me to make Remote Desktop in C.
Now I know basic socket functions for windows in C i.e. I know how to make
echo server in C.
But I don't know what to do next. I searched on internet but couldn't find
something informative.
Could someone suggest me how to approach from this point..any tutorial...or any source ?
I think this is do-able. For a college project, you don't need to have something as complex and as full-featured as VNC. Even demonstrating simple keyboard and mouse control and screen feedback would be enough, in my opinion, and that's well within reach.
If you're doing everything from scratch and using Win32, you can get the remote screen using the regular "printscreen" example all around the internet.
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cpp/Screen_Capture__Win32_.aspx has it, for one. You can then compress the image with a third-party library, or just send it raw; this wouldn't be very efficient but it would still be a viable demonstration.
Apart from capturing the screen data remotely and showing it in the local window, you'll need to listen for local window messages for mouse and keyboard events, send them to the remote host, and then play them back. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms646310%28VS.85%29.aspx will probably do that for you.
Check tightvnc TightVNC is a free remote control software package. The source code is also available.
For sending the image of the screen I would probably use rtp. The JRTPLIB is really handy for that.
And yes, as KevinDTimm says, an echo server is the very easiest part.
KevinDTimm may well be right, writing an RDP client would a fairly significant undertaking. To give you some idea, the current spec, available at the top of this page, is 419 pages long and includes references to several additional documents for specific aspects of RDP like Audio Redirection and Clipboards.
I want to write an app to test whether a Windows machine is responding correctly to RDP (Remote Desktop) - i.e. to check if the machine not only allows the connection, but is also responding normally, and is not hung or otherwise responding abnormally.
Is there a library or utility that I can use to do this? My searches turned up full RDC clients, but I'm hoping there's something out there at least offers an API for testing. I would most like to use Java or a scripting language to do this, but I'm open to suggestions.
You can find some good answers in this question: Programmatically create and launch and RDP session (without gui)
Because RDP is a constantly evolving proprietary protocol, i'm guessing there isn't some simple open-source code you can take and use. This leaves us with two possible paths to follow:
Use Microsoft RDP ActiveX control (on Windows)
Launch mstsc.exe and send keyboard events to it (also on Windows, using your favorite language)
For the second option, I suggest AutoHotkey. It is perfect for automating windows programs and comes with a powerful library. It also has a strong comunity behind it so you can find lots of useful scripts on the internet. I use it to control winamp (like 'i hate this song! delete it and move to next')(well, technically 'move to the next song and delete the previous' because you can't delete the file while in use but you get the idea). If you choose this path, i can help you with the script.
Found this on Experts Exchange:
use Net::Telnet ();
$t = new Net::Telnet (Timeout => 10, Prompt => '', Port >= 3389);
if($t->open("computer.name.or.ip")) {
print "Connect successful\n";
}
else {
print "Could not connect\n";
}
The idea was to attempt a connection and if it can't connect within 'x' amount of seconds, assume it isn't going to work. Gets a bit more complicated if you're trying to see if a login for a specific user works or not, but this should at least get you started.
NOTE: As pointed out in the comments, the original solution left out the RDP port, so I included that in this...