Transparent Windows Form and Tesseract

[pprimez]

I am not sure how to start building this prototype. I am planning to build a transparent window so that I could overlay it into an area with text in it (specifically a chat window). I would then use tesseract to gather text from that chat window in real-time

Questions:
1. How do I create a transparent window that would capture the items inside it ? (so that I could pass the images to tesseract)
2. Any performance suggestions so that there would be no lags. I would basically capture a white window with text in in every 1 to 2 seconds.

If anyone has done similar stuff before I hope someone could share the source code.

Here is how the prototype should look:

 

[JohnH]

One option is to set the forms Region, and use Region.Exclude to exclude the inner part of it. Control.Region Property

Bitmap class and Graphics.CopyFromScreen is easy to use to capture screen if you need that also.