Skip to main content
K.Daube
Community Expert
Community Expert
January 25, 2021
Question

When is the FM-window ready to receive key strokes?

  • January 25, 2021
  • 0 replies
  • 138 views

Dear friends and experts,

Since many years I create utilities with AutoHotKey (AHK) which send keystrokes to applications. This is very simple for all application but FM > 8.

To just send to the current window the command is

 

Send {ESC}id

 

If I want to insert a longer text, this is first put into the paste buffer and then sent with ^v

To target a specific window the window is activated with reference to the window title:

 

WinActivate, Adobe FrameMaker
Send,  {ESC}id   ; Focus indocument

 

This works until FM-8, but not with the later versions using the 'new interface'.

Although AHK still regcognises a window title (Adobe FrameMaker), this can not be used. Also the statement

 

WinActivate AHK_EXE FrameMaker.exe

 

activates something, but it is not the main window. It turns out to activate the last opened sub-window, in my case the graphic toolbar.

Then I try

 

WinActivate ahk_class FrameFamily15.MdiFrame

 

This has the same effect, although I see that the window is activated. Using CTRL+f opens the Find/Change pane and brings the window in a perceptive state. Further AHK activations work as expected.

 

Finally I do the following to be able to work right from the beginning when FM was opened and a document is active with the cursor at a position to work from:

 

fmVersion := "15"                       ; 10 … 16
If !WinExist("ahk_class FrameFamily" . fmVersion . ".MdiFrame") {
  MsgBox, 48, Error, FrameMaker window was not found. Exiting.
  ExitApp
} Else WinActivate
WinGetPos,,, width
MouseClick,, width - 350, 10
SendKeyStrokes("Where are we?")

 

This sends to text to the current location.

The mouse moves to a position left to the icons top right in the FM window and clicks.

Only this way I am completely free what I do next.

Side note

As I complained elsewhere more than once, there is no easily recognisable indication, that the window is active by the title bar colouring. There is only a light difference in gray level of the top right icon area:

From

to 

This topic has been closed for replies.