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In the Windows API, 

x,y = win32api.GetCursorPos()

...will get the mouse position regardless of whether it's inside your window or whether your program even has a GUI. (MSDN) (Python question)

Is there a similar function to get the scrollwheel (mousewheel)'s current rotation?

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OJW
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    http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9472234/intercept-all-wm-mousewheel-messages – OJW Mar 15 '12 at 14:13

1 Answers1

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The mouse wheel's rotation is not an absolute value like the cursor position. Rather, the wheel position is the delta from the previous wheel position, either positive or negative, expressed as a multiple of 120 (120 = 1 line.). So, if the user scrolls up three lines, the delta might be +360 whereas if they scroll down three lines the delta might be -360.

You can keep an internal variable that you update every time your app gets a WM_MOUSEWHEEL message which will allow you to track the cumulative change in rotation since your app started. So if a user scrolls up 10 lines and down 20 lines the cumulative delta would be -1200.

Andrew Lambert
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  • your app doesn't get a WM_MOUSEWHEEL message if it's not the active window so that doesn't particularly help (unless there is some trick to getting those messages?) – OJW Feb 10 '12 at 11:49