getting tooltip text for an icon button of another program

[atbowler]

I'm working on a testing program for another program (the target), and I want to

recognize some special buttons.  For buttons with text, I can read the text, but if

there is an icon on the button instead I just get a emtpy string.

The target program wiill display a tooltip with text for the button if a human

makes the mouse hover over it, and while a tooltip is visible I can read the

the tip text with WinGetText (or _GUIToolTip_HitTest).  Unfortunately, the

fact that a tooltip is on the screen does not really tell me it is the tooltip

for that button, and usually, there is not a tooltip being displayed.

Is there some way to get the text for a tooltip associate with a specific button?

Can I send some message to the button control to make its corresponding tooltip

appear so I can read the text withWinGetText.

I've Googled around but I only seem to find info on how to build/display tooltips

from an Autoit program, not how to work with tooltips of a target program.

[BrewManNH]

I'd be really suprised if _GUIToolTip_HitTest returned anything for a button's tooltip, as it works with tooltips that have $TTF_TRACK set, and static controls rarely will have that set.

You might want to look at _GUIToolTip_GetText and the second example in the help file as a way of getting the text you need.

[atbowler]

You are right.  about  _GUIToolTip_HitTest,

I meant _GuiToolTip_GetCurrentTool.

The problem with _GUIToolTip_GetText is that it requires 3 arguments.

I don't know the last two, and have have several tooltips to guess about for the

first one.

This is the information I get about the tooltip when it is visible.

000201be ''
  State(07): Exists, Visible, Enabled
  Style=94000003 Xstyle=00080080
  Class=WindowsForms10.tooltips_class32.app.0.3598b65_r9_ad1
  text: 'Refresh the view with current information.'
   0 0x1e0
   1 0
   2 0x2a
   3 0
   4 0
   5 0
   6 0
   7 0
   8 Refresh the view with current information
   9 0

The "Text::"  line is the string from "WinGetText", and what follows is the array data from

_GuiToolTip_GetCurrentTool.

I'm looking for some way to get from the handle of the button, to the text of the tooltip.

Aside:  Note that the flags happen to include TTF_TRACK.  However, I don't know what.

the 0x40 flag means.

[BrewManNH]

The second example in _GUIToolTip_GetText doesn't actually use _GetText, it uses _GUIToolTip_GetCurrentTool, you'd have to change the class being used in the example in the WinList function. Although I'm not sure if even that would work with that tooltip because it doesn't appear to use the standard Windows API class to create it.