Hide TabTips

[AlastairP]

TabTip.exe is the on-screen keyboard used in Windows 8 tablet PC

I would like to hide the keyboard with VFP after being used
Can anyone help with this?

 

[Olaf Doschke]

How do you call it? If you simply RUN /N or ! /N tabtip.exe that keyboard runs. The user can close it.
You gain control on a process you start, when using CreateProcess() Windows API.

Read here:

http://www.west-wind.com/wconnect/weblog/ShowEntry.blog?id=533

If you neither call WaitForSingleObject(), nor close the process handle via CloseHandle(), you can terminate the process via TerminateProcess(), after that you should CloseHandle() additionally.
See

http://www.news2news.com/vfp/?function=225

for the declaration.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[AlastairP]

The tablet will be used for asset management by field technicians and therefore I am trying to minimize the number of actions required to perform the tasks. Opening and closing of the keyboard automatically at specific moments will greatly improve the operation of the app.

I am currently opening and closing the keyboard with these functions

OPEN

DECLARE INTEGER ShellExecute IN shell32;
    INTEGER hwnd, STRING lpOperation,;
    STRING lpFile, STRING lpParameters,;
    STRING lpDirectory, INTEGER nShowCmd

ShellExecute (0, "open", "tabtip.exe", "", "", 0)

CLOSE

FUNCTION closetabletkeyboard
lcProcess="tabtip.exe"
lcComputer = "."
loWMIService = Getobject("winmgmts:" ;
    + "{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" + lcComputer + "\root\cimv2")
colProcessList = loWMIService.ExecQuery ;
    ("Select * from Win32_Process")
For Each loProcess In colProcessList
   IF ALLTRIM(UPPER(loProcess.name)) == ALLTRIM(UPPER(lcProcess))
     loProcess.terminate()
   endif
Next

When running the shell execute, the keyboard appears OK
Problem being that by using terminate to close the keyboard, there is now a delay when opening the keyboard again as the process has to start up


I will have a look at the CreateProcess() Api as you suggested and see if I can make it work

 

[Olaf Doschke]

starting tabtip.exe will always take a little time lag. I don't see a way to hide and show the keyboard, unless you click on the close button (upper right X) on the keyboard, which doesn't terminate it, but let's it slide to a screen side.

You could try to send a windows message to minimize the keyboard window, if you get the hwnd handle.

Bye, Olaf.