Thread: How to invoke Apps, by Mapping Keyboard

Hi All,

From quite a few days, I have been trying to figure out, as to How do I go about coding a program which would enable me to launch applications at a press of a key....

For Eg:- In Windows when we press F1 we get help ; F3=Find...

In the sameway, I would like tode a program which would help me customise my keyboard.....

Say, when I keyin 'E', IE window should pop up.....

Any ideas......?

Look up accellerator keys......

I have not found anthing helpful in that site.....

However afte doing some research, I have found out that I was actually heading in the wrong direction.....

I have been able to write a Keyboard handler in 'C', which traps the interrupt 9. So that I can check the key which has been pressed, but now at this stage, I wanted to launch an application for that particular keystroke....

I have also written a similar program in ASM, which checks for a
particular keystroke & gives a beeping sound. I made this go memory resident (TSR). But this program seems to work only in the DOS window.... when I close the DOS window the program does not seem to work.

So I guess I have to be coding a Windows TSR....

Since Windows has its own keyboard buffer, and no DOS-based application can look at or modify the Windows keyboard
buffer. So I would need to write a Windows-native application to do anything with Windows keystrokes.

I don't have a clue as to how to go about doing this... Could someone help me please ?

hi Govi;

awhile back i wrote a program that traped all keystrokes from the user. it was awhile ago but off memory what you need to do is create two files, your .exe file and a .dll file. The dll has to be global and you need to use 'hooks'. there are a few good tutorials out there, so a search on google.com will help you.

anyway this might not be the best way, but thats how i would go about it for now. just trap all keystockes between whatever values you want, and execute whatever program that key matches.

Goto msdn.

Look up background services and key accelerators.

Toally CONFUSED[B] !!!

I have been through the MSDN site, now I have got so much information, that I am totally lost... Now I don't know where to start off from...

However these are my priorities :-

1.) First write a Keyboard Handler....

a.) Which would detect keypresses.....
b.) Validate for the correct keypress..

2.) Then write an Event Handler, to launch a application...

3.) Lastly make it go Memory Resident...

This is the first time, I would be trying to code a Windows Native Program....

I don't know how I am going to do it, but I am determined to do it anyway..