[jawsscripts] Re: chopping up block of text on Tab delimiters or via color? String monipulation,

Hi Geoff,

I didn't know either, that GetTextInRect removed non visible characters such 
as tabs.

I've done some testing, & found some interesting anomalies, in the way Jaws 
*sees* tab characters, & likely other non visible characters.

In wordPad, if you type a couple of words, hit the tab key to insert the tab 
character, another couple of words & the tab again, another word or 2, then:
1. hit home to move the PC cursor back to the beginning of the line, then 
arrow across to where you placed the tabs, then Jaws recognises the tabs & 
announces them as expected, & says 9 on a triple hit of numpad5.
2. change to the invisible cursor, & place it at the beginning of the line. 
On repeating the above reading, the tabs are not recognised, & Jaws sees 
them as character 0.
* Very strange indeed *
Conclusion.
Make sure that when you are using a script/function to pick up text where 
tabs etc are required in that text, that the type of cursor that is active 
during the pick up, is able to *see* the tabs.
* I was not able to get the GetTextInRect function, to pick up tab 
characters with any cursor active, or with any manipulation of that 
functions parameters.

I also looked for other functions that may be suitable for your purpose, but 
none seem able to get blocks of text from an emulator screen.

You may like to try placing a cursor on a line, in that set of lines, then 
using GetChunk () & see if it will pick up the whole group of lines 
including the tab characters.

I use GetChunk () extensively in my emulator scripts, & it can yield some 
unexpected, & sometimes very useful results.

Failing that, below is a function which may do what you want.  It involves 
the inelegant running about of the invisible cursor that you aluded to, to 
repeatedly call GetLine () to accumulate the information from the group of 
lines.

It presumes that as well as seperating the individual items with tab 
characters, that there is either a tab character at the end of each line, or 
at the beginning of the next line, such that the last item on the first line 
is seperated by a tab from the first item on the next line when the lines 
are concatenated together.
If not, then unrem the additional script line as indicated.

By doing this in a seperate function, it keeps your original script for 
doing the task uncluttered as in my guesswork demo. Just substitute the 
actual values for my sample ones in the call to GetTextBlock.  The first 
parameter is the X pixel coordinate somewhere on the first line to be picked 
up, the second is a Y coordinate, & the third parameter is the number of 
lines you want to pick up with Getline().

Note: below the demo script, is the .jsd entry for the function in case you 
aren't familiar with page 2 of the control+I dialog.  If required, just cut 
& paste it into your .jsd file inside the script manager, save with 
control+W, exit & restart the script manager before compiling.



String Function GetTextBlock (int StartPosX, int StartPosY, int 
NumberOfLines)

VAR

INT Count,

STRING ReturnString

SaveCursor () ; saves which cursor was active when this function was called

InvisibleCursor ()

SaveCursor () ;saves the position of the invisible cursor so it will be 
returned there when the function exits

MoveTo (StartPosX, StartPosY) ; move the invisible cursor to somewhere on 
the top line

LET Count = 1

While (Count <= NumberOfLines)

LET ReturnString = ReturnString + GetLine ()

; unrem the next line if the application does not provide a "\9" at the end 
or beginning of a line

; LET ReturnString = ReturnString + "\9"

NextLine ()

LET Count = Count + 1

EndWhile

RETURN (ReturnString)

EndFunction



Script TestOnF8 ()

var

string StringVar,

string AnnounceString,

string VirtualShowString

let StringVar = GetTextBlock (174, 84, 3)

; this will read ok if the tab character immediately follows a text item 
without any intervening spaces

; note that the tab is replaced by a period & 2 spaces as in normal 
sentences

let AnnounceString = StringReplaceSubstrings (StringVar, "\9", ". ")

; here, the tabs are replaced by the line feed character, \N, in Jaws.

let VirtualShowString = StringReplaceSubstrings (StringVar, "\9", "\N")

if IsSameScript () then

; replace the below line with your way of displaying the user buffer

SayMessage (OT_User_Buffer, VirtualShowString)

ELSE ; hit once

; replace the below line with your way of saying a string

SayString (AnnounceString)

EndIf ; key hit once or more

EndScript



.jsd entry.

:function GetTextBlock

:Returns string the block of text

:Param int/StartPosX the X pixel position for the first line to be read

:Param int/StartPosY the Y pixel position for the first line to be read

:Param int/NumberOfLines the number of lines to be read including the first



Regards,
Paul from Aust

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Geoff personal" <gch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Wow Paul and Donald! this is all just fantastic stuff for me! thank you
thank you so much to both of you for your kind energies and efforts, and for
providing invaluable example code here for me of these function usages.
 There's lots here I've never used, and it sounds like it'd be helpful for
me to get to grips with all of this.

What I've done today is firstly try Paul's approach, since I recieved it
first.
After some time, ... ok a lot of time, diddling with this, what it appears
to me like is happening is,
The GetTextInRect function I'm using to grab blocks of data from the screen,
seems to me, somehow, to be actually AutoConverting the "\9" tab characters,
to spaces in my string! Before the
StringReplaceSubstrings function gets time to do it's stuff.

So that by the time it does, there's no tabs left in the string to be found!



is that possible? probible?

Then, I thought that perhaps this GetTextInRect function, upon only
recieving the 4 parameters of Left, top, right, and bottom, might feel it
was being given permission to strip out Tabs automatically, because I wasn't
asking it to keep lineBreaks as a whole block.
But that's not it either, as when I fill in all 8 of the parameters,
including a 1 at the end to retain LineBreaks, it still doesn't seem to
work.

So, when I follow Paul's logic, By the way I never ever knew that the tab
character had a value of "\9", nor that spaces had one of "\32" before,
But, thanks to this great coding help,
I do now!
so, as I say when I use paul's logic, and insert the word "Blonk. " in
quotes where he previously had coded a period character, as I'd indicated I
desired,
just to make things reeeally clear to me,
when I replace "\9", with "\32", like this:
(Oh I've also altered Paul's example stringCode names a bit as well to suit,



;let sAnnouncePromptsWithPauses = StringReplaceSubstrings
(sFunctionKeyPrompts, "\32", "Blonk. ")


It's putting the word "Blonk" in my resultant string every single place it
sees not only a space, (which of course appears sometimes between the
wordings of the function Key options themselves, so is obviously quite
non-optimal,
but also whenever it sees the Tab delimiters!
Which is just so weird!
So it thinks they're spaces too!
Has anyone ever encountered this before, and/or have any way around it such
that the string gathering retains the tabs, with their character value of
"\9", as is?

I've just tested GetTextInFrame,  and it does exactly the same thing!
ooooh man! I've just clarified this even more, by discovering that when I
use a GetLine instead, then Paul's logic works a treat! and the tabs or "\9"
characters, seem to indeed be retained in the string, and thus found by the
StringReplaceSubstrings, function!

So one wonders now, why on earth would certain stringGathering functions
feel it their duty/ungiven permission, to treat Tabs as spaces!

<sigh.>



So I guess I'll have to do reeeeally crude and slow stuf like Routing jaws
Cursor to certain spots and doing GetLine, nextLine, GetLine stuff, which is
just sooo inelegant!

Any thoughts anyone?

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