Question

Sorry that I have to describe the functionality in such a roundabout manner, but I’ve no idea how to best implement the wanted functionality*

I have a simple program that puts some data into the clipboard when a global hotkey is pressed. The usual use case for the user is then to directly paste that text into a textfield in Photoshop. I.e. – assuming ctrl-x invokes the global hotkey – they’re constantly doing ctrl-x ctrl-v. Clearly that’s bad design.

So what’s the simplest way to basically simulate the ctrl-v event so that Photoshop will paste the text directly without an additional keypress?

As the winapi tag implies I don’t care about Macs here. Has to work under Win 7, compatibility with XP/Vista would be a definite plus. Rest of the script is written in Python3 with PyQt4, but I can write some c extension if necessary too.

PS: Everyone who has a better idea wrt the title is more than welcome to improve it.

*And I want to avoid the trap of implementing the simple halve of a problem and then asking for something impossible.

Answer 1

Use SendInput(). I didn’t test this, but it should work:

INPUT ctrlV [4];
ZeroMemory(ctrlv, sizeof ctrlV);

ctrlV [0].type = INPUT_KEYBOARD;
ctrlV [0].ki.wVk = VK_LCONTROL;

ctrlV [1].type = INPUT_KEYBOARD;
ctrlV [1].ki.wVk = 'V'; //assuming ASCII

ctrlV [2].type = INPUT_KEYBOARD;
ctrlV [2].ki.wVk = 'V'; //assuming ASCII
ctrlV [2].ki.dwFlags = KEYEVENTF_KEYUP;

ctrlV [3].type = INPUT_KEYBOARD;
ctrlV [3].ki.wVk = VK_LCONTROL;
ctrlV [3].ki.dwFlags = KEYEVENTF_KEYUP;

SendInput (4, ctrlV, sizeof (INPUT));