On Sunday, April 9, 2017 at 1:34:36 AM UTC-6, R.Wieser wrote:
Lee,

I do know that if you repeat the key ...

You know that I had to check that ? I either never knew or, more likely
forgot all about it. It seems to work only for the very first char though.


Well that works both ways, you've been teaching me right along too. Yes, only working well on the first character.


... I've just tried to see if "systeminfo" would tell me what model and
make my motherboard is, but it doesn't seem to do so. It'll have to wait
until next time I'm taking the thing apart I guess (and maybe put it into a
textfile somewhere. :-) )

Somehow I knew this would be the outcome. hee, hee. If it weren't for the fact that my 1997 $125 JDR ChainTec special came with a motherboard manual with the number on the front cover I wouldn't know it either. And then I lost it for a while so I did have to tear it down and look, then archive that info into a text file, download the manual and most recent BIOS too. Builders should do that day one, but we never do - having too much fun with the new toy. Here is a free tip - don't store your motherboard manual PDF on the same machine. You can of course, but if you also store a copy on a different box you can maybe get at it easier if God forbid something happens and the 1st box won't boot no more?

But I seldom mention forthright which language I'm using, as I've seen
people stop responding to questions (mostly regarding the use of DLL
functions) when I did so.

Still interested in more information but it's off topic

As far as I can tell this particular newsgroup allows for a *lot* of leeway.
As long as its not overtaking the groups origional purpose ofcourse ...

I was reluctant as to posting of voluminous source code, you've found a way to shortcut that issue, thanks.


The relevant call is "SetWinEventHook" (in user32.dll) which I instruct to
listen to EVENT_SYSTEM_FOREGROUND only. When that one fires I use
"GetAsyncKeyState" to check the VK_ALT, VK_CTRL and VK_SHIFT keys and see if
any is pressed*. If so, I pop up a modal message-box. Currently thats
about all. I noticed that I could probably include a check if the
new-focussed window is a popup, and than ignore it.

*Though I'm currently not even sure if "GetAsyncKeyState" is the right call
to check for the sticky key ...

Regards,
Rudy Wieser


Well I'm not sure either since I haven't run down all the dll calls available. It does seems to work somewhat and that's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick any day. I've seen some info on the finer details of the insides of a dll call, how it processes states, etc., and it's an interesting read whenever I stumble upon those and I know instinctively that this particular page gets about one visit per month if that. But I don't know where to start doing what you've done and that might be the reject factor when trying to discuss this method before - your audience doesn't know either and therefore can't begin to help much.

I am almost a master with the lowly 6502 on the mighty Atari 8 bit and very much a noob with x86 but have been able to monkey around with the source to aefdisk which went open source on GitHub just last year - the author is done with working on it so posted source of a derivative of the last free (with two defeated functions) and commercial version he was offering for decades. It was somewhat defective source and with help at msfn got the fix put in. MetaPad source is also out there somewhere, it needs a slap or two upside the head as well.