Choosing a tool for identifying window elements

The dialog and script XML files require you to identify the window element (dialog box, field, or other dialog component) to which your dialog or script element is responding. For example, after a script invokes a menu for a native application, it must identify the window element on that menu to which keystrokes or an action are to be applied.

You can easily identify a dialog box by the caption it displays in its title bar; however, you must use a tool such as Microsoft Spy++ to identify lower-level window elements. The lower-level window elements can be identified through a variety of attributes, which are not externally obvious.

Additionally, each native application may identify its window element differently. As a result, there are multiple ways of identifying a window element. Here is the suggested order for considering window element identification:

1.	Caption itself if it is unique

2.	Control ID, which may or may not be unique for a given dialog box

3.	Class name, which may or may not be unique

If the attributes fail to identify a caption, you can instead identify a window element by using its index with respect to its parent. An index specifies the position of the window element relative to its sibling window elements. Frequently, indices are the only way to identify combo boxes.

•	Microsoft Spy++ displays captions by using an ampersand (&) to identify the caption’s hot key. For example, Spy++ shows the caption for one Print dialog box as Pri&nt. This presentation indicates that the hotkey is 'n'. Caption titles in script and dialog XML files must omit ampersands.

•

Some captions include line breaks. PDF Generator ES cannot identify line breaks. If a caption includes a line break, include enough of the caption to differentiate it from the other menu items and then use regular expressions for the omitted part (^Long caption title$). (Using regular expressions in caption attributes)

•	Be sure to use character entities (also called escape sequences) for reserved XML characters. For example, use & for ampersands, < and > for less than and greater than symbols, ' for apostrophes, and " for quotation marks.

Current page: http://livedocs.adobe.com/livecycle/es/sdkHelp/programmer/sdkHelp/generatePdfPDFG_DG_AppMon.65.9.html