HAT - Hotkey Abstraction Tool

HAT is a simple console tool, which allows to simulate keyboard input to the currently active window on desktop. It uses android phone or tablet as a controller. The keyboard commands are organized and stored in special configuration files, which are passed to the HAT program when it starts.

Requirements

HAT tool (compiler requirements):

Requirements for building the tool code are:

• C++14 - compatible compiler
• boost libraries (boost::asio and boost::program_options are used in the project)

Also, HAT uses ROBOT c++ library for the keyboard simulation, so, please check the requirements page for this library (there are different requirements for different platforms).

Client device:

Android device, for the user input should have android v 3.0 or newer with TAU client app installed (link to the app on google play store).

Compilation

Visual Studio 2015:

The project has a set of solution and project files for Microsoft Visual Studio 2015. In order to build it, the following steps should be done:

1. Build the static library for the Robot submodule:

• Open the solution file for the submodule with vs2015: src/external_dependencies/robot/Robot.vs15.sln
• Select the desired build configuration (LIB for release, or LIBd for debug versions of the library)
• select the target platform (Win32 or Win64)
• Build the solution

A *.lib file will be placed into the src/external_dependencies/robot/Binaries/[platform] directory ([platform] could be either Win32 or Win64, depending on configuration)

2. Provide the paths for the boost include and library directories in order to build the main project:

• Open the solution file for the main project: src/hat.sln
• Provide the environment variables for the boost resources. This is done via the User-defined macros section of the project setup window. See the MSDN documentation page on how to do it. The following variables should be added:
  • include path for the boost headers: BOOST_INCLUDE_DIR
  • the library directories for the needed platforms and configurations (not all the variables need to be specified):
    • 32-bit debug libraries BOOST_LIB32D_DIR
    • 32-bit release libraries BOOST_LIB32R_DIR
    • 64-bit debug libraries BOOST_LIB64D_DIR
    • 64-bit release libraries BOOST_LIB64R_DIR

After these steps, the project should be able to build without problems.

gcc:

In order to compile the project with GCC compiler go into src folder of the project and execute make all command.

Execution

The hat is a command line tool, which has the following arguments:

command line argument	is optional?	description
--command	no	The csv file that holds the information about the hotkeys. See the description for it.
--layout	no	The custom text configuration file for the layout, which is displayed to client. See the description for it.
--keysDelay	yes	The interval in milliseconds between each of the simulated keystrokes. The default value is 0 (no delays).
--port	yes	The port number, on which the tool will listen for the incoming connections. The default value is 12345.
--stickEnvToWindow	yes	The parameter, which, if specified, will instruct the tool to ensure that the simulated keyboard events are sent to a specific window.

Please see the general_design section for more details on the usage of the tool.