Mapping hardware tools into existing AI tools

Question

I have an interactive board with tools (such as pen or eraser) which I want to integrate with the AI. The typical scenario woulld be as follows: the user lifts the pen from the tray, the pen event will me mapped into selecting Pencil Tool from AI toolbar after which the user can add freehand annotations to the AI document.
Is there an API which would allow me to map abailable hardware tools with relevant AI tools? Is there an example which would demonstrate such integration?

Answer 1

No, there's no example for a pluging listening for external triggers, but I wouldn't be too concerned about that. You'd just need to take one of simpler example plugins (you can probably leave the stuff it does in for now) and then just add your listening code setup to the StartupPlugin() method. Presumably this will involve callbacks of some kind.
Once you have that, you'd do something like this in your callback:
void callback(int id)
  // an application context is needed to 'kick' AI when you come from somewhere unusual, makes sure its all ready to go. Otherwise you get wierd errors
  ai::AppContext context(pluginRef); // you'll need to stick the reference to your plugin in some static global somewhere so you can use this
  char toolName[255] = "";
  MapIdToTool(id, toolName);
  SelectTool(toolName);
void SelectTool(const char* toolName)
  ai::int32 count = 0;
  sAITool->CountTools(count);
  char buffer[255] = "";
  for (ai::int32 i = 0; i < count; i++) {
    AIToolHandle tool = 0;
    sAITool->GetNthTool(i, &tool);
    sAITool->GetToolName(tool, buffer);
    if (0 == strcmp(buffer, toolName) {
      sAITool->SelectTool(tool);