access the text being generated in other windows

[algebraist]

hi, newbie question here

i play poker on partypoker and ultimate bet (both of which have clients
you have to download)... i was thinking of writing a program that used
the hand histories these clients generate (in little text boxes within
the client)

is there a way python can access the text being generated in other
windows, by other programs/processes?

ultimatehistory.exe is an example of what i'm talking about (written in
C++, i think)... it takes the text output that ultimate bet's client
generates, and saves it to disk... i would like to do something
similar.

cheers
(i'm running python 2.4 on winxp sp2 home edition)

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[bmgz]

is there a way python can access the text being generated in other
windows, by other programs/processes?

my guess- you will probably have to resort to some rather downright
dirty screen scraping.

 

[algebraist]

yeah, someone else mentioned getting the window's handle (can use
spyxx.exe for this) and then using hooks... but i'm not sure where to
go to learn about using window hooks, in python (or in general,
actually)...

is this 'downright dirty screen scraping'?