[blairmacintyre]

Hi, I was looking for some pointers on how to do a few things on OSX. I'm trying to include an OSX machine (my machine of choice) into a system we've built using Windows. (I've done lots of programming on Unix and Windows, and while I've been a Mac user for a dozen years, I've never done any programming on the Mac.)

(Background: I'm a CS prof at Georgia Tech, and as part of a research project my group is doing, we are integrating desktop computers with electronic whiteboards and other devices to create a more cohesive electronic work environment. We currently use Windows for the desktop/laptop machines).

On the desktop (currently a Windows machines), we have a multiple workspace manager, where each workspace represents some activity you are working on. As part of the integration with the whiteboard, we show visualizations on the whiteboard of each workspace on all your machines; these serve as both awareness of your projects, plus as an achor for notes and other integration with the whiteboard.

To create these visualizations, we need snapshots of the application windows in each workspace. We also need to watch keystrokes on the desktop, to intercept hotkeys and (eventually) to do automatic background searches of your files and the web for things related to what you are doing.

So, what I need to know is, how can I have a process periodically (or, preferably, when things like focus changes and window open/close events occur) grab copies of windows from other applications. And, how can I watch what is being typed, even if it's not in my application. Any hints, even pointers to the "correct part of the manual", would be appreciated.

On Windows, we use low-level Win32 hooks to intercept all events on the system. I haven't been able to find anything equivalent on OSX.

thanks for any pointers.

[smeger]

Take a look at vnc. There's an OS X server here.

There's also a very nice (disclaimer - I ported it to OS X) VNC client here.

[blairmacintyre]

Originally posted by smeger:
Take a look at vnc. There's an OS X server here.

There's also a very nice (disclaimer - I ported it to OS X) VNC client here.

That's a great suggestion, thanks!

Alas, the link to OSX VNC link you give goes to some generic homepage. I've done some googling, and can't find an OSX vnc server anywhere. I've even found posts on the web saying "the OSX VNC server has disappeared!"

If you have, or know of, a copy of the source to it, I'd really appreciate it.

[Chuckit]

Originally posted by blairmacintyre:
Alas, the link to OSX VNC link you give goes to some generic homepage. I've done some googling, and can't find an OSX vnc server anywhere. I've even found posts on the web saying "the OSX VNC server has disappeared!"

It worked fine for me. I went to the VersionTracker page, clicked on the download link, and now I've got OSXvnc-0.7.dmg. Here's the direct download link. Try that. If it doesn't work, I can mail you the DMG.

[blairmacintyre]

Originally posted by Chuckit:

It worked fine for me. I went to the VersionTracker page, clicked on the download link, and now I've got OSXvnc-0.7.dmg. Here's the direct download link. Try that. If it doesn't work, I can mail you the DMG.

Sorry, I should have been clearer. I tried to go to the "developers" site from VersionTracker so I could get the source, and that link was dead. More searching eventually revealed that the author had dropped the domain used by versiontracker and moved to a .mac web page.

[Angus_D]

Originally posted by blairmacintyre:
To create these visualizations, we need snapshots of the application windows in each workspace.

All you can do using public APIs is get a read-only pointer to the screen. To get window rects and info about who owns windows requires using private, undocumented, APIs which don't have any headers and may require reading assembly of Apple libraries and a bit of guesswork at the arguments

We also need to watch keystrokes on the desktop, to intercept hotkeys

This isn't terribly easy, either. There has been some discussion about this on the darwin-development mailing list. It requires writing your own IOKit HID driver superclass, or something like that.

So, what I need to know is, how can I have a process periodically (or, preferably, when things like focus changes and window open/close events occur) grab copies of windows from other applications. And, how can I watch what is being typed, even if it's not in my application.

The official answer is: "You can't". Oh, and there is no manual