Finding available shortcut keys (originally "Where's the 'New Window' command?")

TBugReporter

I’m dancing as fast as I can (meaning “as my spare time allows”), but I’ve hit a snag. I want my script’s output to read the name of the tab where a given shortcut was found, but the descriptions I’ve found of how to do this for other languages either assume the existence of library functions in that language which I can’t find source code to, or else they dive headfirst into deep voodoo without a life jacket. :-}

I’m guessing I have to do something like

user32.SendMessageW(sys_tab_hwnd, TCM_GETITEMCOUNT, 0, 0)

but send a different message, and figure out how to read the response. Any chance one of you could point me in a less random direction?

Also, given that this thread has drifted so far away from the original topic, is there any way I can change its title?

Ekopalypse

@TBugReporter

I can take a look today after work (in 6-7 hours).

guy038

Hello, @tbugreporter ,

Regarding specifically the title changes, which title would you like to see ? As a moderator, I can modify it easily !

BR

guy038

Ekopalypse

@TBugReporter

Found the time to try it out during my lunch break.

TCM_GETITEMW = (TCM_FIRST + 60)  # get the current tab message
TCIF_TEXT = 1  # flag to specify that we are only interested in pszText

# define the storage that will contain the requested information.
class TCITEM(ctypes.Structure):
    _fields_ = [('mask',        wintypes.UINT),
                ('dwState',     wintypes.DWORD),
                ('dwStateMask', wintypes.DWORD),
                ('pszText',     wintypes.LPWSTR),
                ('cchTextMax',  wintypes.INT),
                ('iImage',      wintypes.INT),
                ('lParam',      wintypes.LPARAM)]


pszText = ctypes.create_unicode_buffer(260)  # create a buffer to hold the tab text
tcitem = TCITEM()  # create an instance
tcitem.mask = TCIF_TEXT  # specify that we want to read the pszText field
tcitem.pszText = addressof(pszText)  # points to the tab text buffer 
tcitem.cchTextMax = len(pszText)  # length of buffer
pITEM = byref(tcitem)  # pointer to the concrete struct TCITEM 

# within the for loop call
found = user32.SendMessageW(sys_tab_hwnd, TCM_GETITEMW, tab, pITEM)
if found:
	print(tcitem.pszText)

Seems to work, let me know if anything is unclear.

TBugReporter

@guy038:

which title would you like to see ?

How about

Finding available shortcut keys (originally "Where's the 'New Window' command?")

As a moderator, I can modify it easily !

TYVM!

@Ekopalypse:

Seems to work, let me know if anything is unclear.

Yes, that looks like the info I needed; now I just have to add it to the script.

TYVM to you too!

TBugReporter

@Ekopalypse

My latest sticking point:

NameError: global name 'byref' is not defined

rdipardo

NameError: global name 'byref' is not defined

Try ctypes.byref instead.

TBugReporter

Here’s a question from the “newless cluebie to Python” department:

I’m currently struggling with errors like

NameError: global name 'my_new_variable' is not defined

I read that there’s a “global” statement that can help, but it doesn’t seem to work for me. Exactly where should this go? Or, is there another way I can rearrange the code that will avoid this?

Ekopalypse

@TBugReporter

In the function in which it is used, suppose there is a code like this

x = 42
y = {'x': 42}

def main():
    global x
    x += 1
    y['x'] += 1
    print(x)
    print(y)
    
main()

x needs to be defined as global, while it is not necessary for y, because it is a dict.

TBugReporter

The pest is back! 😁 (I thank you in advance for your patience with me.)

Can I use PythonScript to display a Windows MessageBox? Can I create my own custom dialogs in Windows style?
How can I prematurely end my script (if something weird happens)? I found sys.exit(), but this apparently terminates all of Notepad++ along with the script.

PeterJones

@TBugReporter said in Finding available shortcut keys (originally “Where’s the ‘New Window’ command?”):

Can I use PythonScript to display a Windows MessageBox?

Yes. 😉1

Can I create my own custom dialogs in Windows style?

Not easily. 😉2

How can I prematurely end my script (if something weird happens)? I found sys.exit(), but this apparently terminates all of Notepad++ along with the script.

The best way I’ve found is to have a bunch of “if” processing so that it keeps on dumping out without running any of your code

----

WinkNotes: 😉3

😉1: notepad.messageBox()

😉2: Alan tends to get around this by doing a bunch of free-form ~~editor.input()~~ notepad.prompt() calls, and then processing the text that the user types in to make the decisions. In theory, since PythonScript comes with the libraries necessary to access any of the win32 API functions: see plenty of examples in the forum with accessing SendMessage; searching the forum on the SendMessage from win32 API, and narrowing it down to @Ekopalypse’s posts, will get you some good examples pretty quickly – you would then have to extrapolate from that on how to access the various win32 API functions you want. But that said, I don’t know how practical it is to build a whole window using raw API calls – normally when programming win32 API, you would use resource files or equivalents, but I have no clue if you can define a resource file and easily give access to that resource file to the Python interpreter in PythonScript. (If you figure out a way, let me know, because I want to use that to reduce my library requirements in PerlScript some day.)

😉3: wink notes are similar to footnotes, but made more annoying because I hid my actual answer inside the footnotes rather than in the main flow of the conversation

TBugReporter

@PeterJones said in Finding available shortcut keys (originally “Where’s the ‘New Window’ command?”):

The best way I’ve found is to have a bunch of “if” processing

If I have to resort to something like that, I’d use

while True:
    pass

instead. (Still an evil hack, but it seems slightly more elegant.)

Ekopalypse

@TBugReporter

With ctypes you have access to the Windows Api and can therefore do everything it offers. E.g. create a TaskDialog.

You can also build your own dialogs with the included Tkinter module, see for example the Formatter.py script from the demo directory.

As for sys.exit, I found out that calling a “main” function and returning from that function serve the same purpose.

def main():
    if x != 0:
        return

main()

PeterJones

@PeterJones said in Finding available shortcut keys (originally “Where’s the ‘New Window’ command?”):

free-form editor.input() calls

It was pointed out to me that it should have said notepad.prompt() . sorry for the confusion. I have updated the original post to not confuse future readers.

Alan Kilborn

@Ekopalypse said in Finding available shortcut keys (originally “Where’s the ‘New Window’ command?”):

You can also build your own dialogs with the included Tkinter module

For me, this approach is just “too much” as in “complication” but to each his own. Maybe I’ve just never liked Tkinter in general.

I don’t know, I’ve felt that the “mini UIs” I’ve been able to create with the notepad.prompt() window are lightweight and workable… A classic example would be in this THREAD; see the script in the Dec 16, 2017, 11:03 PM posting.

PeterJones

@Ekopalypse ,

Was your screenshot created with the Tkinter library, or with raw calls to the TaskDialog? If with raw calls, could you share the code (as a gist if it’s too long to fit nicely in the forum)?

Ekopalypse

@Alan-Kilborn

I don’t use Tkinter either, but as you said it is an alternative.
90% of my scripts I use have a configuration section, so no dialog at all. The rest use dialogs like the task dialog.
Just my preference - could be done differently.

@PeterJones

The screenshot with the TaskDialog was created with ctypes and the corresponding Win32 API calls.
Give me a few minutes to create a standalone, callable version. I’ll post the link to the gist once I’m done.

Ekopalypse

@PeterJones

tested with PS 2 and 3.
Note the comment on FindResourceExA
If something is unclear, let me know.

Alan Kilborn

@Ekopalypse said:

(provided code link)
tested with PS 2 and 3.
Note the comment on FindResourceExA
If something is unclear, let me know.

I’m sure it works great.
IMO though, it seems “heavy”.
But…it depends on how much effort one wants to put in, I guess.

I mean, that is a lot of lines of code, just for a UI for a script.
When considering that the non-UI part of the code is only going to add to that already large line count, well…

Also, there’s no “edit box” type of input demo’d, which seems kind of important when one considers what we’ve been able to do in the past to gather user input from the workhorse notepad.prompt() function.

This is by no means an insult to the code provided, just some comments…

Ekopalypse

@Alan-Kilborn

Yes, it is larger than a “prompt” solution, and the TaskDialog is strictly defined by MS. You can only have what it provides.

If you want a custom dialog, you have to wrap DialogBoxes
but that is just as heavy, if not heavier, than the TaskDialog.

The prompt solution may be fine for simple scripts, but as soon as you need to parameterize a script with different settings depending on different models, it is much easier to use a guided dialog, at least in my opinion.