Personally, I would first try to get the core functionality right, that is, finding windows and sending events to them, instead of worrying about how to make things look pretty.

For X Windows, there is X11::GUITest, which, if it is anything like its Win32 counterpart, can send keystrokes and mouseclicks to windows. I'd first write a self-contained program that sends a series of keystrokes to a given window. Making a pretty interface will still take a lot of time, but if you don't have the core functionality, all the chrome of a shiny GUI won't help you make your application.

Usking X11::GUITest was a good place to start. Thanks.

I was able to successfully send keys to the window.

Since I need an event based model, a GUI interface, and Wx and Events to work together, I need to have the main loop of Wx perform the polling of WindowIds

This is how I did it using events:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use 5.010001;
use strict;
use warnings;

use X11::GUITest qw/:ALL/;
use Event;

my $window_id = 0;
my $last_window_id = 0;

#check the id of the window with focus every 'interval'
Event->timer(
    interval => 1,
    cb => \&check_focus_id
    );


sub check_focus_id {
    #check the current window ID
    my $curr_id = GetInputFocus;
    #if it has changed
    if ($curr_id != $window_id){
        #write the change to the log;
        write_to_log ($curr_id);
        #shift variables out, I thought of using an array to do this
        #but for testing purposes I chose this to explicative
        $last_window_id = $window_id;
        $window_id = $curr_id;
    }
    #if focus ID is the same
    else {
        #for now do nothing
    }
}

#write to log
sub write_to_log {
    my $id = shift;
    
    open my $LOG, '>>', '/home/jon/log.out';
    say $LOG $id;
    close $LOG;
    
    return 1;
}

#start the main event loop
Event::loop;
[download]

Can someone assist me in figuring out how to get Wx to poll like that, or a better method of polling?

Thanks

The story so far...

• For the time being I have decided to use Wx as the GUI engine for my application.
• Figuring out Wx with only C++ documentation is interesting. (I'm not very familiar with C++)
• My biggest challenge was determining a method to 'watch' for input focus to change. (there weren't many examples, I did find one in python, which--well,looks like line noise to me)
• I still need to determine a method for sending special keys, i.e.: ^N, etc
• and as someone pointed out on IRC, I don't format like a normal person... I'll leave that up to you to decide...

anyway, here is my first attempt on all of this. I was successful at sending text to the screen. As I am sure there is a better way to do all of this, Comments, suggestions, jokes, are welcomed, even invited.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use 5.010001;

use Wx;

my $last_id = 0;
my $curr_id = 0;

my @id_list = (undef) x 3;

package MyFrame;

use base 'Wx::Frame';
use Wx::Event qw(EVT_BUTTON EVT_TIMER);

sub new {
#use X11::GUITest qw/:ALL/;
use X11::GUITest qw/GetInputFocus SetInputFocus SendKeys/;
    
    my $ref = shift;
    my $self= $ref->SUPER::new(
                undef,         #Parent Window
        -1,          #Window ID (-1 means any)
        'wxPerl',    #Window Title
        [-1, -1],    #Default Position
        [171, 30],   #size
    );
    
    #create panel
    my $panel = Wx::Panel->new(
                    $self,    #parent window
                    -1,       #id
            );
    
    #create send key button
    my $button = Wx::Button->new(
        $panel,        # Parent Panel
        -1,        # id
        'Send Hello',    # label
        [85, 1],    # position
        [-1, -1],    # default size
    );
    
        # create Quit button
    my $button_quit = Wx::Button->new(
                 $panel,        # Parent Panel
                 -1,        # id
                'Quit',        # label
                [1, 1],        # position
        [-1, -1],    # default size
    );

    my $timer  = Wx::Timer->new(
        $self,        # Parent Frame
        -1,        # Timer ID
    );
    $timer->Start(1);
    
        EVT_TIMER $self, $timer,\&do_stuff;
#send key button                    
    EVT_BUTTON $self, $button, \&on_click_button; 
    #send key click quit
    EVT_BUTTON $self, $button_quit, \&on_click_quit;

    return $self;
}

sub do_stuff {

    my $this_id = GetInputFocus;
    if ($this_id != $id_list[2]){
        print STDOUT $this_id . "\n";
        shift @id_list;
        push @id_list, $this_id;
    }
    else {
        #do nothing for now
    }
}

sub on_click_quit {
my ($self, $event) = @_;
    
    $self->quit;
}

sub on_click_button {
    my ($self, $event) = @_;
    say @id_list;
    SetInputFocus $id_list[0];
    print STDOUT "sent to: $id_list[0], last: $id_list[1], $id_list[2]
+\n";
#    SendKeys QuoteStringForSendKeys("%N");
    SendKeys ('hello');
    $self->SetTitle( 'Clicked');
}

package MyApp;
use base 'Wx::App';

sub OnInit {
    my $frame = MyFrame->new;
    $frame->Show(1);
    
}

package main;

my $app = MyApp->new;
$app->MainLoop;
[download]