Re: "hooking" into another app

FROM : Christopher Nebel
DATE : Mon Apr 14 19:03:23 2008

On Apr 14, 2008, at 8:24 AM, Oliver Quas wrote:

> Am 14.04.2008 um 16:58 schrieb Florian Soenens:

>>
>>

>

>>> on 4/14/08 8:26 AM, <email_removed> purportedly said:
>>>

>>>> Re-read my message. If it was unclear, what I want to do is be 
>>>> able to
>>>> log (record) text being written to a chat window from another 
>>>> app. NOT
>>>> log key strokes. For example, how could I progmatically record 
>>>> an  AIM
>>>> chat conversation from my app?

>>>
>>> You can't, at least not without the application's cooperation, 
>>> such as being a plugin, using OSA, etc. With a *user's* (or 
>>> administrator's) cooperation, you could have an app that acts as a 
>>> proxy. Another option would involve a kernel extension, and that 
>>> may be more work than it is worth.

>


> Under the premise that your Chat-Client supports AppleScript, why 
> not use the ScriptingBridge?


Because Scripting Bridge is for controlling other applications, not 
for writing handlers that an application will call.

Mr. Arnel's answer is basically correct -- you're going to need the 
target application to give you some hooks to hang your recorder on. 
(Unless you want to do something grungy like a kernel extension, that 
is.)  Some chat clients provide such hooks as part of their 
scriptability.  For example, iChat in Leopard has a rather extensive 
set of handlers that you can attach AppleScript scripts to, and from 
there you can do what you like -- in your case, you'd want the 
"message received" handler.  You never specified the application you 
were interested in, but take a look at its scripting interface (drop 
it on Script Editor) and see if something looks promising.


--Chris Nebel
AppleScript Engineering