GUI Capture

Revision as of 11:45, 1 November 2006 by Juliant (Talk | contribs)


Overview

TODO

Approaches

There are different approaches for capturing GUI events:

Low Level Hooks

On Windwos it is possible to capture low level window events. Through these it is possible for a capturing tool to launch the AUT and then install a hook to receive all input events. This should also be the case for Unix although it is not checked yet.

Pro
  • Capturing tool and AUT are separate
  • Can capture events from any application
Contra
  • Only receive low level events. No information about focus-changing for example.
  • Unclear how to receive additional information about AUT like current active widget or widget name of clicked widgets

Eiffel Level Hooks

For Vision2 we could implement a capturing mode. When this mode is activated, all events - including focus-chaning events or other higher level events - could be exported to a file. The implementation would mainly be done in the underlying toolkit (WEL and GTK implementation).

Pro
  • Capturing of all events
  • Additional information is available (e.g. widget name)
Contra
  • Activating capturing is part of the AUT
  • Only Vision2 can be captured