On 12 Feb 2002 at 9:04, Robert Mecklenburg wrote: > First, please excuse the newbie question. I don't think this is > off-topic, but my judgement isn't the one that counts. ;-) I've done a > good bit of searching with google, faqs, and posting to > comp.lang.perl.misc, but can't figure this out... > > I'm using the most recent cygwin port of perl (revision 5.0 version 6 > subversion 1) on windows 2000. I want to send "alt+f x" to an Outlook > Express window from a perl script. It seems that ActiveState Perl can > do this with the Win32::Setupsup package, but that the vanilla perl > (or cygwin's perl) cannot do this?
I am pretty sure they cannot; why would they? Perl doesn't come from Windoze; it comes from UNI*. Anything that Perl has been "taught" about running on Windows and manipulating 'doze features, has happened relatively recently (relative to Perl's origin point). And a great deal of that added 'doze functionality has been added by workers for ActiveState or rolled into the ActiveState releases tho originating earlier in someone's work (G. Sarathy for ex.). Credit where credit is due. > I tried to install the Win32-CtrlGUI-0.22 package from cpan.org but it > requires Win32::Setupsup which is not on cpan.org. I found this > package on perlring.org but it seems to require ppm. I found > references to ppm at activestate.com but it appears to be a feature of > ActivePerl rather than of "just perl". Yes, ppm is an invention of the folks at ActiveState, specifically I think the major parts have been created by Murray Nesbitt. Look for ppm on CPAN. ppm is now distributed for everyone to use however they will (as a general- purpose utility; they envision it being used well beyond only for installation of Perl extentions). You can surely get ppm working on cygwin Perl with a bit of effort; it just isn't built-in like it is for AP. ALSO, please check the ppm file for "Win32::Setupsup" which might just be a gzipped-tarball inside a .zip file, with (maybe) a .ppd file and stuff? outside the tarball. Maybe not, too. But many ppm files are just an outer wrapper around a standard CPAN dist package, TTBOMK. If this is the case, you are in luck and you might just be able to build it by hand -- using the standard perl module building incantations of course. Specific instructions concerning which, BTW, would getting quite OT for this List, should they be brought up... > So the question is: "how to I send keystrokes to a Windows window with > cygwin Perl"? Absolutely likely you do not want to fruitlessly boogey with futility unless you happen to already be an accomplished Win32 programmer (and are ready to brave xs or learn 'Inline.pm'). You probably want to use the means that the existing Win32 C extentions to Perl (such as those packaged with ActivePerl) can provide. Look, cygwin Perl is not magical; it does not automatically have parallels to all the extra Win32 stuff that ActiveState has put into their product. It is what it is: an 'orthodox', useful, solid UNI*-ish *core* perl packaging. It's not a 'competitor' with AP + all the extensions that are commonly and conveniently installed with/to AP, and comparing the two is making an apples-and- oranges mistake. Generically, two of the mechanisms Windows provides for interapp communication are OLE and the ancient DDE message protocol. If you are truly feeling creative and adventurous you might start there. But I have a feeling you will probably find you need to bite the bullet in the end, install ActivePerl and port your script to ActivePerl -- if you cannot get the necessary module support installed through Cygwin Perl, which you may well not be able to. Unless you are low of disk space or something, it isn't so bad. Installing AP will only take you a few minutes and after all its a good tool to have on hand sometimes. I run both; so do many others, I think. One thing that will do for you is motivate your programmer discipline in that you'll perforce become oriented towards writing very portable scripts that don't lazily over-rely on UNI*-POSIX'isms nor on Win32-isms. Not that there aren't specific occasions when your goal is to do something very platform-specific and so non- portability cannot be avoided. HTH, Soren Andersen -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Bug reporting: http://cygwin.com/bugs.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/
