Detect scroll activity (when LC is not frontmost)

[Mike Bonner]

I have an answer..

Heres a sample script:
local sRunning

on mouseUp
if sRunning is empty then put false into sRunning
put not sRunning into sRunning
loopit
end mouseUp

command loopit
if sRunning then
put the last word of (shell("ioreg -c IOHIDSystem |grep Idle")) into tIdle
put tIdle / 1000000000 into field 1
send "loopit" to me in 2 sec
end if
end loopit

The script is in a button, and I have a single field on the card.  The math
is done to convert to seconds of idle.

The are only 2 disclaimers here.  First is that the value returned pre 10.3
is hex so you'd have to handle that if you have an earlier osx.  10.3 and
after this solution should work fine.

The second issue is is that on mac 10.12, the idle time won't update on
typing.  Its an osx issue for that specific version, but worst case you
already have a method to track keypresses.

On Sun, Dec 25, 2016 at 8:21 AM, Paul Dupuis <paul at researchware.com> wrote:

> On 12/25/2016 10:05 AM, Terry Vogelaar wrote:
> > So it starts to become clear that it might not be possible to do what I
> want. Although I hope to be wrong about that.
>
> I think it is very unlikely you can do this in LC - without externals or
> LCB widgets from "infinite Livecode".
>
> The active mouse and keyboard drivers capture events from these devices
> and pass that information to the operating system, which massages the
> data and passed a higher level of events on to the active application,
> which looks for such events and handles them. In the case of the
> LiveCode engine - or any app built on the LC engine - that is executing
> applicable messages for your scripts to handle.
>
> Most productivity tracking software works by effectively inserting code
> into where the device drivers meet the operating system, so that mouse
> and keyboard events are captured by the productivity app's as well as
> being sent by the OS to the active application as normal.
>
> Using LCB and LC9.0 you might be able to write an LCB widget that does
> this, but I am not familiar enough with current OSX APIs for event
> capture or drivers under OSX to or the state of work in LC9.0 on
> integrating OS API calls to say for sure.
>
> You are unlikely to be able to do what you want in LiveCode script alone.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> use-livecode mailing list
> use-livecode at lists.runrev.com
> Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your
> subscription preferences:
> http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
>