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Pen Input
Detecting when the screen has been tapped by the pen is fairly easy using GetEvent32. However, there are side effects. One potential problem is that GetEvent32 stops the program until an event occurs (rather like Get). Normally this is OK though.
A second problem is that lots of events are returned, such as a keypress, or the program moving to the foreground or background, the Psion being switched on and so on. Luckily, you can ignore many events and just respond to the ones you want.
The program here responds to pen taps and key presses. You first need to declare an array of long integers since this is used by GetEvent32 to return the results of the event.
A good choice is ev&(32).
Call GetEvent32, passing it the array. The program then prints the event code, returned in ev&(1), in hexadecimal. Why? It's easier that way. If ev&(1)=&408 then a pen event has occurred. We don't know what sort of pen event it is though, so we check ev&(4), which can be either 0 (pen down), 1 (pen up) or 6 (drag). The program below just checks for 0 and 1.
Assuming it is a pen event, the following information is returned in the ev&() array:
ev&(1) = &408
ev&(3) = window ID
ev&(4) = (see below)
ev&(6) = x-co-ordinate
ev&(7) = y-co-ordinate
And ev&(4) has one of the following values:
0 = pen down
1 = pen up
6 = drag
Other values are returned, but they aren't important. Now we know when the pen taps the screen and can read the x,y coordinate. It's up to you what you do with this information. One thing you could do is check to see whether the x,y coordinates lie within some object on the screen and take appropriate action.
While we're using GetEvent32 I might as well mention that a keypress is indicated by the expression (ev&(1) and &400)=0. If this expression is true, then the key code is stored in ev&(1). It's worth pressing a few keys - try a, and Ctrl+a, the menu key and so on - and see the values returned:
PROC peninput:
Global ev&(32)
At 1,1 : Print "Press a key/tap the screen... Press s to stop"
While 1
Getevent32 ev&() Rem Wait for an event
At 1,3 : Print "Event code = ";Hex$(ev&(1));" "
If ev&(1)=&408 And ev&(4)<2 Rem Pen down event
At 1,5 : Print "x = ";ev&(6),"y = ";ev&(7);" "
Endif
If (ev&(1) And &400)=0 Rem Keypress
At 1,7 : Print "Key pressed = ";ev&(1);" ";
If ev&(1)=%s : stop : Endif
Endif
Endwh
ENDP
