Stefan Schmiedl said:There are too many variables in your statement of the problem to
provide a "completely definitive" answer:
Stefan Schmiedl said:Speaking of reliability ... have you noticed the last sentence of claim 15
on the web page of your patent? Does your software really "invoice" the
second program?
Then what's the advantage to just parsing the HTML? In this specific context?
Do you want to move the mouse over every pixel? That would be about a million
on my screen, and you'd have to *wait* for a possibly slow browser (running
on a multitasked system) to really respond to the event. There goes the real
time response.
It has the same limitations as a person, if a link is not visually identified to
a person, most people will miss it too.
Michael Rauscher said:I said "yes" to "it might be possible". To me "within everything pertaining to
Java" includes the Java language, the Java Platform and in particular the JNI,
too.
So, if one can provide a DLL that is able to "always obtain the exact location
and state of any graphical user interface control" and one can use the
functions of this DLL by wrapping them with Java native methods, then it might
be possible.
With regard to the "opposite answer": this is most probably the consequence of
different interpretations of your question.
E.g. "within Java" is a very unclear statement to me. It could mean anything
from the language to the platform, with JNI/without JNI...
Patricia Shanahan said:Peter Olcott wrote:
...
Remember that people have natural language understanding capability. A
piece of text can say something that indicates to a human that it is
likely to be a link. To attain universality, your program has to work
regardless of the choice of natural language. What is the Chinese for
"click here for ..."?
Even among web pages with distinctive formatting for links, the
difference can be anything.
Patricia
Peter said:How about we simplify this specification and merely say: Is there any possible
way by any means generally available to the public to always obtain the current
state and location of every graphical user interface control by one program
pertaining to another program?
To what extent do you know?Michael Rauscher said:OK, this makes life easier since I can give a short, definitive answer: I
don't know.
Bye
Michael
Peter said:To what extent do you know?
Can you name one specific way that one program of any kind can obtain the
current location and current state of the graphical user interface controls of
another program that is a Java program?
Michael Rauscher said:To what I've written in previous posts: there's a way to use native functions
from within Java applications.
I don't know. In fact, meanwhile I don't even know what you're trying to
figure out (I assume that there aren't any side constraints):
- 100 % pure Java code can solve the problem: I'd say most probably no.
- there's a way for a Java application to use a solution: yes - most
probably - if one can provide (native) code that solves the problem.
- there's a way to solve the problem in particular with respect to Java/Swing
applications: I don't know but as you stated that your technology works with
any application, you should know it.
In that case, why are you concerned with the innards of the Java GUI?Peter said:UNIVERSAL meaning that it will work correctly for every application on any
platform. Any scripting language requires a programmer to tell it what to do. It
can recognize all the text on the screen simultaneously while recognizing
everything else, regardless of the size, color, or font (or even language) of
the graphical objects.
Peter Olcott said:From the best that I can tell, from the expert advice that I received here, even
this tiny task would tend to be difficult. The specific aspect of this task that
I must analyze is the difficulty of determining the current state and exact
location of any graphical user interface control. Since Java has at least three
different technologies for creating these controls, a first estimate from my
limited point of view would be that even this tiny subtask would require a hodge
podge conglomeration of these three technologies.
Chris Smith said:Perhaps I can provide a better answer. There are three commonly used
GUI technologies, as you've gathered, but we could be more explicit
about the names. They are:
- Plain AWT
- AWT with Swing
- SWT
Two of these are based on AWT, and the third is based on SWT. Both AWT
and SWT provide the ability to determine the exact location and state of
user interface controls from within that application, if you already
have a reference to the user interface control. From outside of the
application, you'd have to either act like a debugger and ensure the app
is running in debug mode, or obtain a handle to a JVM instance via JNI.
Neither can be done uncooperatively. So to do this with Java APIs, you
need to at least have the cooperation of the application that you wish
to interact with.
It is not reliable, at least in AWT or AWT/Swing, and probably in SWT as
well, to ask the operating system. Lightweight controls in AWT (and
this includes all Swing controls except the top-level containers) are
not exposed to the operating system, so the OS won't be able to give you
their location, nor even know that the control is there. So it is
probably not worthwhile to pursue the route of asking the OS.
You seem to be interested in recognizing controls based on the
equivalent of a screen shot. In this case, you actually need to
consider a larger number of cases: for one case per platform (and
possibly per JVM implementation) for plain AWT and for SWT, and one case
per look and feel for Swing. Since Swing has pluggable look and feels,
a component can literally look like anything in the world, depending on
which look and feel is in use. Of course, custom components may look
different for any of the above.
Finally, you keep mentioning your patent. That really sucks. Please
don't be part of the problem.
Peter Olcott said:I have to have patent protection otherwise a big software company will simply
take my idea, and squish my efforts and life savings with their unlimited
development and advertising budget.
Only because of the possibility of some protection from this do tiny little
one-man development companies have any significant chance of surviving.
Without patent protection it would not be worth the risk, therefore many
innovations would never be created. A patent only lasts 17 years, and then its
public domain.
Chris said:Plenty of one-person development companies survive. I'm sorry if you
don't think you can be one of them. Obstructing the rest of the world
is still not an ethical response.
Only 17 years? Do you realize what software looked like 17 years ago?
Do you realize what it would look like now if everyone had patented what
they did 17 years ago?
You are part of the problem.
My software technology will save businesses billions of dollars every year. If IChris Smith said:Plenty of one-person development companies survive. I'm sorry if you
don't think you can be one of them. Obstructing the rest of the world
is still not an ethical response.
Only 17 years? Do you realize what software looked like 17 years ago?
Do you realize what it would look like now if everyone had patented what
they did 17 years ago?
You are part of the problem.
Patricia Shanahan said:Confession: I'm a co-inventor on half a dozen computer architecture
patents, only one of which has passed the 17 year limit.
I don't see anything unethical about my employer wanting ownership of a
design they paid for.
Patricia
Peter said:My method processes screen pixels, it does not need to understand the internals
of anything. I am trying to determine is the extent that competitors could use
alternative methods to achieve or approximate the functional benefits of my
technology.
Michael Rauscher said:I don't see any other way to achieve this than processing pixels in some way -
at least for the general case.
BTW: pixels and screenshots can be obtained by java.awt.Robot.
If one is happy to work with MS Windows controls, I could imagine the use of
the Windows function WindowFromPoint to obtain a handle to the window or the
use of a system hook to monitor window messages.
But this is by far off topic and since I'm not really at home in this subject,
I won't/can't deepen it.
Patricia Shanahan said:Confession: I'm a co-inventor on half a dozen computer architecture
patents, only one of which has passed the 17 year limit.
I don't see anything unethical about my employer wanting ownership of a
design they paid for.
Chris Smith said:This is getting well off-topic (which is my fault... sorry), but neither
do I. It is when your employer claims legal rights over people who
independently happen to do things the same way that things get shaky.
Empirically, though, this tends not to happen so much with physical
inventions. It happens daily with software patents. For this reason,
rather than for any theoretical distinction, I object more to software
patents than physical patents. I would agree, though, if you wanted to
say that the real problem in both cases is that the patent office needs
to have the expertise to decide whether the advantages to society
outweigh the disadvantages for a given patent before they grant it.
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