You can not select more than 25 topics
Topics must start with a letter or number, can include dashes ('-') and can be up to 35 characters long.
87 lines
3.2 KiB
87 lines
3.2 KiB
20 years ago
|
This is VisualNaCro.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
DISCLAIMER: recorder.pl is not yet functional.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
What does it?
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
It is a Perl module meant to remote control a VNC server.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
It includes a recorder (written in Perl) to make it easy to
|
||
|
|
record a macro, which is just a Perl script, and which you can
|
||
|
|
modify to your heart's content.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
The most important feature, however, is that you can mark a
|
||
|
|
rectangle which the Perl script will try to find again when you
|
||
|
|
run it. Thus when you play a game and want to hit a certain button,
|
||
|
|
you just hit the Ctrl key twice, mark the button, and from then on,
|
||
|
|
all mouse movements will be repeated relative to that button, even
|
||
|
|
if the button is somewhere else when you run the script the next
|
||
|
|
time.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
If you know Tcl Expect, you will recognize this approach. Only this
|
||
|
|
time, it is not text, but an image which is expected.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
How does it work?
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
It acts as a VNC proxy: your Perl script starts its own VNC server.
|
||
|
|
The script now can intercept inputs and outputs, and act upon them.
|
||
|
|
In order to write a macro, start
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
recorder.pl host:port my_macro.pl
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
connect with a vncviewer of your choice to <host2>:23, where <host2>
|
||
|
|
is the computer on which recorder.pl was started (not necessarily the
|
||
|
|
same as the VNC server!). Now your actions are recorded into
|
||
|
|
my_macro.pl, and the images you want to grep for will be saved as
|
||
|
|
my_macro-1.pnm, my_macro-2.pnm, ...
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Why did I do it?
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Because I could ;-)
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
No really, I needed a way to write automated tests. While there
|
||
|
|
exist a lot of OpenSource programs for web testing, I found none
|
||
|
|
of them easy to use, and for GUI testing I found xautomation.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Xautomation has this "visual grep" (or "graphical expect") feature:
|
||
|
|
given an image it tries to find it on the desktop and returns the
|
||
|
|
coordinates. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to record macros
|
||
|
|
with it, and it only works on X11.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
As I know VNC pretty well, and there are VNC servers for every OS
|
||
|
|
and gadget, I thought it might be cool to have this feature to
|
||
|
|
control a VNC server.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Actually, it makes it even easier: with plain X11, for example, you
|
||
|
|
can not know where on the screen the action is if you don't check
|
||
|
|
the whole screen. This complex problem is beautifully addressed
|
||
|
|
in Karl Runge's x11vnc.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
My main purpose is to run regression tests on different browsers,
|
||
|
|
which I can easily do by starting Xvnc and using VisualNaCro.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
How did I do it?
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
I wondered long about how to do it. I couldn't take the same approach
|
||
|
|
as xautomation: I cannot connect to the VNC server thousand times
|
||
|
|
per second. So I decided to create an interface of LibVNCServer/
|
||
|
|
LibVNCClient for use in a script language.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Fortunately, this task is made very, very easy by SWIG. As Perl
|
||
|
|
is one of my favorite script languages, I decided to use this.
|
||
|
|
But SWIG makes it easy to use the very same interface for other
|
||
|
|
popular languages, so you are welcome to port VisualNaCro to
|
||
|
|
the language of your choice!
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Isn't it pronounced "Visual Macro"?
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Yes. But I liked the Visual Na Cro play of acronyms. I'm sorry if
|
||
|
|
you don't find it funny.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
What's the license?
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
GPL. It is based on LibVNCServer/LibVNCClient, so it has to be.
|
||
|
|
If you want to port this package to use vncreflector, which has a
|
||
|
|
BSD license, go ahead.
|
||
|
|
|