Re: pointers for newbie wanting to write a 'window' logger
Re: pointers for newbie wanting to write a 'window' logger
- Subject: Re: pointers for newbie wanting to write a 'window' logger
- From: Joel Sherriff <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 08 Sep 2008 12:15:09 -0400
Hmm, well it looks like the thing I expected to be hard is easy (thank's
to Philip's pointer), but the thing I expected to be easy isn't so
much. This is also not particularly a kernel thing, but I might as well
continue the thread if no one objects...
Any thoughts on how to get the window title of the "active" window? The
event mechanism doesn't give a lot of detail since it's at such a low
level - Process Serial Number, PID, and a bunch of other things I don't
understand...but not Window Id, so I know now that an event occurred,
but not what window it was sent to. That's half the battle. It looks
like there's a new CGWindow interface in Leopard that has some details -
but only the application name (kCGWindowName), not the title. And,
without a window id in the CGEvent data I couldn't link the two together
anyway. But application name isn't sufficient for my needs - I really
need the title.
Joel
Philip Aker wrote:
On Sep 5, 2008, at 2:43 PM, Joel Sherriff wrote:
New to OS X, but I need to write an app that records activity
similiar to a keylogger - only that I don't want the keys that are
recorded, only to know that a key or mouse button was pressed and
what the window title of the window that got the event was. A
window-activity logger, versus a keylogger. I'd prefer not to go to
as low a level as a kernel extension,
Sounds like you could do this with the event tap and window facilities
available in CoreGraphics (CGEvent.h for starters). Look here
<http://prefabsoftware.com/> to see an illustration of the tap portion
of your needs.
as I'd really like to keep this in user space (but I will, if I have
to). I've done the same thing in Windows (using hooks) and Linux (X11
using the XRecord extension to the X server), but I know little or
nothing about Quartz, Aqua, Carbon, kernel extensions, etc, etc, so
I'm asking for guidance as to the right layer to target and
technology to use. In the X11 version, the monitor loads from the
Xsession config - that is it starts when the user logs in and runs
only while the user is logged in... ideally I'd like to mimic that.
Can someone with more experience on OS X features give me some pointers?
Btw, I know this isn't specifically a kernel question, but I figure
the kernel guru's would know best when something shouldn't be done in
a kernel extension. If a kernel extension is the only way to do it
though, then that's the way I'll go.
Philip Aker
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