Detecting Text Cursor

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Is there any way to detect text cursor icon anywhere. Like I am writing in this text field, my program could detect that text cursor is enabled here, and possibly generate any event after detection.

Posted 13-Apr-15 5:46am

Member 11485559

Updated 13-Apr-15 20:06pm

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Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 13-Apr-15 14:50pm

What do you mean by "text cursor icon". There is no such thing, is there? :-)
And be certain: is it about ASP.NET, WPF, or Forms? The answers on each would be unrelated to each other.
—SA

Member 11485559 14-Apr-15 1:48am

Thank you for your response.

To be very precise, I have a keyboard which I need it to get visible only when any text field is in focus. That text field could either be anywhere, in forms, text fields in websites etc. I am sorry, if my question confuses you, it actually confused me as well, as I need something like that.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 14-Apr-15 2:13am

No need to be sorry. Your idea of the behavior of your virtual keyboard is excellent (so I up-voted the question), but there are problems with it. I am not sure that such detection can always be possible, by the reason I explained about WPF, and hence, some other cases of applications. However, you can try my answer...
—SA

2 solutions

Solution 1

There is no cursor as you describe it. The "text cursor" is really called the "caret", or insertion point. It's just a line or other symbol that is periodically drawn and removed to show the user where the next character is going to be typed. There is no global event or other mechanism that notifies when are where the symbol is drawn.

You can however get the window that currently has the input focus with GetForegroundWindow[^] and then call GetCaretPos[^] to get the caret position in the client window coordinates. This can fail if the current window doesn't have a caret.

Posted 13-Apr-15 6:55am

Dave Kreskowiak

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Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 13-Apr-15 14:54pm

No Dave, it won't work with in all cases. For example, it could be some WPF control withing the window; such controls are not windows, so Windows API won't work on then.
This question, with the tags "ASP.NET", "WPF" and "WindowsForms" just does not deserve to be answered, perhaps except for your first two sentences...
—SA

Dave Kreskowiak 13-Apr-15 15:04pm

Oh, I know that. I didn't notice all the tags he put in and just assumed Windows Forms.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 13-Apr-15 15:08pm

Of course you knew that. I did not pay attention for those tags, too. We often don't see something we don't expect to see...
—SA

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 14-Apr-15 2:23am

Besides, there is no a need to get foreground window...
—SA

Member 11485559 14-Apr-15 1:50am

I am sorry, if my question did not deserve to be answered and wasted your time, but I have a confusion which I have written above in SA's comment. I hope you understand that. Thank you

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 14-Apr-15 2:26am

After your clarifications, it certainly deserve answering. Moreover, your idea of auto-hide virtual keyboard is very interesting. It's just about how you ask questions.

I would advise to avoid non-motivated question, which could be very discouraging to the experts, because people don't like to waste time on something which may make no sense. Just the opposite, try to explain your ultimate goals.

—SA

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Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov · Accepted Answer · 2015-04-13T20:17:00

You can try to use: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms648402%28v=vs.85%29.aspx.

With C#, you can use it through P/Invoke: http://www.pinvoke.net/default.aspx/user32.getcaretpos.

Note that if some control with the caret is in focus, this function will return true, otherwise it will return false, so you can hide your keyboard.

Note the difference with Solution 1: there is no need to call any other function. This function gives you current caret position (if any) global to the desktop.

On little problem is: some applications can handle keyboard input, but not use "official" Windows caret API. But you can try it out to see how often it might be the case. For such cases, you can have an option to disable your auto-hide feature.

As to the virtual keyboard itself, it can have certain problems; so please see my advice on this topic in my past answers:
Application focus getting and losing,
Programming on BACKSPACE button,
Creating a Virtual Keyboard.

—SA