And whatever you do get running, you should post up on app central for the rest of us who are interested.
From: Chip Orange [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, May 07, 2012 8:18 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: Visual Studio Express Accessibility Hi again Rick, congrats and thanks for working on this. I hope you saw Jamal's post on how to shutdown a winforms .net app using Application.Current.Shutdown()? It certainly would be better to shut it down than to "kill" the process, and this looks like he's put his finger on the technique. I think it would be worth a wiki article if you develop an external app, and have this tip to pass along to others (along with other advice on getting one running). Chip ________________________________ From: RicksPlace [mailto:[email protected]]<mailto:[mailto:[email protected]]> Sent: Monday, May 07, 2012 4:50 AM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: Re: Visual Studio Express Accessibility Hi Chip, Jamal et al: Chip That is correct. It was hard to explain the script was created in vb.net 2008 express for vb.net 2010 Express. To shut the script down I had to shut down a Project (the script) using the tools available to a vb.net project since the executable (VBNet2010Script.exe) was created in vb.net 2008 express. Perhaps I did not make this clear in one of the posts, could be. But you are correct, I wanted to shut down only the script and not the IDE itself. Jamal: I will be glad to post up the HarvestWindow output and the WinDig output now that I am getting back to working with the script and not on trying to shut it down gracefully, which was seemingly not possible. I am pretty sure there are things I can do to make the Express Versions a little nicer to work with and since you guys are Gurus with Windows Programming you might have ideas and solutions I dont know and dont know I dont know if that makes sense. Kate, I forget the ModuleName but the problem was that it was the same for both vB.net 2008 Express and for VB.net 2010 Express and WindowEyes uses the ModuleName to associate a script with a Target Application so my script was firing for both versions when I want it firing for only the vb.net 2010 Express version. Finally, Application.Exit did not shut down the script so I was trying all other methods of shutting it down gracefully but only the Killing of the Running Process worked to stop the script in WindowEyes ScriptManager. The discussion about using a Form was because that is the normal way a Winforms Project is shut down and handles all the cleanup and finalization automatically. It also works correctly with WindowEyes to stop the script in the WindowEyes ScriptManager. The Script did not need a Form so I did not want to use a Dummy Form - not graceful but may be the best method in the long run unless WindowEyes can recognize a shutdown request via Application.Exit. Actually WindowEyes recognizes it and fires the appropriate call back but does not terminate the calling thread so WindowEyes keeps the Thread Running and Script Manager does not reflect the attempted termination. Note that Application,.exit does not force a shutdown so this may, or not, be the correct behavior for WindowEyes to follow - that is beyond my Windows Programming understanding and not necessary to get the job done at this point. So, I will leave any discussion about that to the Windows gurus and Software Programmers and Engineers. There are not enough people working with External, Managed Code scripts to merrit more discussion of this on list from a piker like me. So that's it for this thread for now. Kill is working and ok for this particular script so far but I may use a dummy Form in the future if it gets more complex. I will likely post other threads about the Analysis process and what can be done with the available tools. So, I think that's all I have on this thread. Thanks for the great discussion and I look forward to upcoming threads where I can learn more by reading, experimenting and asking questions. Rick USA ----- Original Message ----- From: Chip Orange<mailto:[email protected]> To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, May 05, 2012 3:44 PM Subject: RE: Visual Studio Express Accessibility Rick, I see no reason why you need to kill the visual studio IDE process itself? You only need to stop your own script. A script never tries to stop the process/program which it is related to. Chip ________________________________ From: RicksPlace [mailto:[email protected]]<mailto:[mailto:[email protected]]> Sent: Saturday, May 05, 2012 6:43 AM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: Visual Studio Express Accessibility Hi: I was looking into shutting down a Process from within VB.net Express. To ensure all Child-processes are shut down it appears folks usually use something called the EnvDTE object. This object also gives access to the running Process so you can do things like click a button or change text in a TextBox from another Process like a WindowEyes Script. According to a member of the Microsoft Staff, a posting in a Blog, the Express Versions do not expose the EnvDTE Object to third party applications like a WindowEyes script. This was a quote Business decission on the part of Microsoft. This hampers using UIA, MSAA or any other method I know of to make the Express versions of Visual Studio much more accessible than they are already. It also has thrown a monkey wrench into my plan to Kill the running Process since Visual Studio, and I assume the Express versions, spawn other processes that may be left hanging and running if the Main Process is Killed without due process to the child processes if I read it correctly. I can still make some things much more readable with UIA, MSAA and the WE Object Model but not do much, if anything, that requires information from the Underlying Visual Studio controls or any interaction with them via a script. At least that is my understanding of the problem so far. Since Application.Exit doesnt work, it handles clean up and shut down messages while kill doesn't,perhaps the shut down of a dummy form will work as Aaron used in his original example. I either have to find a way to work around a focus problem using a dummy window if I can, figure out why Application.Exit doesn't work or find another method of shutting the script down ensuring no objects or processes are left hanging. I hope Microsoft knows this decission sucks for blind users of their free Express Versions of Visual Studio that work extremely well for sighted users. Later and I will be able to do a few things even without this missing feature in the Visual Studio Express versions. Rick USA
