dos box

[Mike Meyer]

I have the need under windows xp, using Internet explorer to
What I've heard is called "screen scraping". Read the information on the screen, make a decision & then send information to update the screen.
Sending keystrokes out.

For example, I work for a phone company. We can add Toll Free#'s in a screen & I might need to add 2000 numbers at a time, but they have to be done through a "gui" window in internet explorer.

will this product accomplish that? Most of my programs are written in PBdos3.5, but soon I will be using PBCC5.0

Sincerely, MikeMeyer

[Eric Pearson]

Mike --

Our DOSBox Tools program can "scrape" the screen of a DOS or console program, but not a Windows-style window like Internet Explorer, so I don't think it will help you, Sorry!

-- Eric Pearson, Perfect Sync, Inc.

[Scott Slater]

In PB-DOS it would be easy to do. Just declare an array at the screen's address and look into it to view the contents. In Windows I'm not sure how you'd do this, but I would start by searching the SDK.

In windows you could also manage an array that is a mock-up of what is on the screen as well. For example make your own wrapper routines that write to the screen and the array at the same time. This way you could look at the array to get an idea of what is on the screen.

[Michael Mattias]

>In Windows I'm not sure how you'd do [screen scraping]...

There is no reliable way to do this with a "GUI" window.

Whatever's on the screen may not exist as 'text' anywhere. Eg I have an application where I put text on the screen without putting it into a control - I draw it at painting time - just to keep others from enumerating windows and sucking out that text.

It's a boatload of data for which it took me about 100 hours to develop a 'structured' (read: usable) format, and I really don't want anyone to be able to clone it on the cheap.

MCM

[Erich Schulman]

If you have actual text (as opposed to text rendered as graphics, like a CAPTCHA) in a IE window, you can always copy it to the clipboard. That can probably be done automatically, but if not, you can always use a keyboard macro program. Once text is on the clipboard, a PBCC/PBWin program can fetch it.

[Mike Meyer]

Does anyone know of any good (cheap) keyboard macro programs. That sounds like it might work.

I'm not sure what "enumerating windows" is? That might work too.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Sincerely, MikeMeyer

[Christopher Carroll]

Mike

Does anyone know of any good (cheap) keyboard macro programs.

AutoIt may be suitable for what you want. It is free.

http://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/

Christopher

[Mike Meyer]

Thanks, I'll check it out.

Thanks, I'll check it out