I know this might not be the most perfect place to post about Decal development but the Decal Dev boards seem to have little traffic so I am trying here.


What I am trying to do is send chat from AC to an outside program. The purpose of this is to create a plugin that launches an application that duplicates chat so the user can have many chat windows without using up AC window space.


The method I am trying to use is sendmessage. It has worked for me before in a different application, but for some reason not here.


This is what I have that works outside Decal:





Now I have determined that FindWindow/FindWindowEx both are providing the window I need. But SendMessage/SendMessagebyString are not “sending”. (As a note, any variable passed to SendMessagenbyString’s lParam is null after the call. This is an artifact I have not experienced using this before)


However this whole scheme might be a wrong direction. I have tried to use older plugins that manipulate chat to uncover how they send chat out (like the IRC), but I have not been able to.


So does any plugin dev have any idea why SendMessage is not working, and if this is even a good tool to use in this application? Also, if a dev has used a tool to bring in chat from outside, how did you time it? Is there a way to trip the ChatEventsArg in Decal from outside? Or did you use a timer?


Any ideas would be appreciated.

Personally I would use TCP. I'm sure there are many people out there (myself being one) who have multiple computers set up next to each other, and it might be nice to be able to have stuff spread between the machines.

Of course, the simplest thing to do would be simply to open an extra window inside the AC process, which is pretty easy with .net.

 

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The request from a friend was to have the chat window on the same computer, but in a different window. The issue I think moving across machines would be that you could not send chat from the window unless you were focused on that machine. I also wanted the coding to be simple. I chose something that within a machine that I thought was readily available.


If I were to open a new window within AC’s process, wouldn’t it have to be within AC’s window? This is why I created an exe to run alongside AC. I start the application through Decal and run it. It is its own process although the plugin can send start and kill commands.

Nope. You probably need to run it in a separate thread, though, and do some thread marshaling.

 

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Excellent. Threads in .net are not too difficult (when compared to C++ on Linux).


Do you know where I could find an example of this process? None of the code I have seen seems to demonstrate this and I am unsure where to start within Decal.


I appreciate the help. I am interested in this new direction.

//Example C# plugin to display AC chat in a listbox in an external window
//Threading allows the window to be moved without affecting AC
//Uses a windows form called testform with a public listbox called listBox1
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using Decal.Adapter;
using Decal.Adapter.Wrappers;
using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace pluginwindowtest
{
public class Class1: PluginBase
{
testform myform = null;
ListBox mylist = null;
System.Threading.Thread formthread;
delegate void delempty();
delegate void deladd(string txt);

//////////////////////////////////////////Begin stuff for the other thread
void formthreadstartup()
{
myform = new testform();
mylist = myform.listBox1;
Application.Run(myform);
}

void formthreadkill()
{
myform.Dispose();
myform = null;
mylist = null;
}

void formthreadaddstr(string txt)
{
mylist.Items.Add(txt.TrimEnd('\n');
}
//////////////////////////////////////////End stuff for the other thread

void Core_ChatBoxMessage(object sender, ChatTextInterceptEventArgs e)
{
if (mylist == null) return;
mylist.Invoke(new deladd(formthreadaddstr), e.Text);
}

protected override void Startup()
{
formthread = new System.Threading.Thread(formthreadstartup);
formthread.Start();
Core.ChatBoxMessage += new EventHandler<ChatTextInterceptEventArgs>(Core_ChatBoxMessage);
}

protected override void Shutdown()
{
Core.ChatBoxMessage -= new EventHandler<ChatTextInterceptEventArgs>(Core_ChatBoxMessage);
myform.Invoke(new delempty(formthreadkill));
}
}
}

 

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HA HA HA, this is why I need more friends who code.


It never donned on me just to create the window within Decal. I have done that so many times in applications but I left my senses it seems when I began to look at Decal. Somehow it was different.


Thank you for the help. I really appreciate it.

I have another question.


What do I call to send chat out?


I have been using AddChatText, but that just puts the text in the box. What would I call to say send a tell to another, or send chat to the /a channel?

Host.Actions.InvokeChatParser("/t digero, hello";

 

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I really appreciate the help. I have an error I have been getting that prevents me from finishing. I have posted in on the DecalDev boards but I will re-iterate it here.


I am getting the following error from the log





To see the total post I created on Decavdev:

http://forums.acdev.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=26164#26164

It explains what the code is and my intentions.


I hope someone has an idea of what I am doing incorrectly.