listening for keyboard input regardless of window focus?

[gen1mx6]

i'm building and application that listens for keyboard input (when the program is in the background) and then does various tasks when a certain key is pressed.

for instance i press f5 and a greeting message is typed out.

so its kind of like a macro program to automate some tasks.

i know how to simulate keyboard presses, i just don't know how to listen for keyboard input when the program is not in focus.

[Duthomhas]

http://www.google.com/search?btnI=1&q=msdn+SetWindowsHookEx

FWIW I think what you are trying to do is a really, really bad idea. For example, I use F5 all the time to maximize/minimize the edit window in my Delphi 5 IDE. If something hooks that on a system level, that something must die.

This is because when you hook things you are breaking the UI abstraction that the user expects: pressing keys should have an application-defined meaning; Other applications should not interfere.

There are few exceptions, like Ctrl-Alt-Delete that MSGINA hooks so that rogue applications can be overridden by the system, but in general such things are considered bad karma.

Although, I suppose if you are careful, you might provide some useful features in a specific problem subdomain...

Good luck!