Looking for a Program

fran441

I've searched for a program for quite some time now that will let me input text from my keyboard and register input from my mouse in all open applications, not just the one that is 'active'.



For example, if I had AppleWorks open, Microsoft Word open, and Mail open, whatever I'm typing would be input into all of those applications simultaneously. It's kind of a complex problem I'm working on, cutting and pasting the text later isn't an option and I'd like to be able to use shortcut commands as well (for example, Apple - Q would quit all of the programs).



It doesn't matter if the program is for the Mac or for Windows, I just need something that can provide that functionality for me. A program that had a keystroke command to toggle the functionality on and off would be best, but any program that will let me use input devices across multiple applications simultaneously would work. This needs to be 'real time', as it's not something that is planned beforehand (so a simple macro program isn't what I'm looking for, perhaps there's one that's more sophisticated that I don't know about though).



Does anyone know of such a program?

fran441

I'm still looking if anyone has any ideas.

outsider

Um, i don't know if this is what you're looking for but



http://freaky.staticusers.net/macintosh.shtml

&

http://www.blackout.org/



have some links to key stroke recording apps that are mainly used for sniffing passwords but can be used for what you want, capturing every keystroke you do on your computer.

pbg4 dude

I'm wondering if you could use AppleScript to do the key forwarding. It would have to take every keystroke and transmit said stroke to each selected open application. You would probably have to have the documents you want edited open to start with.

splinemodel

You might be able to use something along the lines of USB Overdrive to log all input from given USB peripherals. Once this log file (i.e. buffer) is available, there is some greater flexibility about how you can implement a loop that dumps the data into each open text file.



As for real time, "Real-time" is a very subjective metric. Unless you use an analog computer there is no way to achieve true real-time. Products that promise "real time operation" merely guarantee that some worst case latency (usually interrupt latency) is below a value defined in the product literature. If you can determine what your worst-case acceptable latency is, then you and I will both have a much better idea about what kind of solution might work for you. For example, if your worst case latency can be 100 milliseconds, a macro operating from aforementioned log file might work fine.