capturing text from a GUI window

[Earl Eiland]

On Tue, 2005-03-08 at 14:27, noah at noah.org wrote:
> Earl Eiland wrote:
> > Anyone know how to capture text from GUI output?  I need to process
> > information returned via a GUI window.
> >
> > Earl
> 
> Assuming Windows, then these guys have an interesting tool:
>     http://www.skesoft.com/textcatch.htm
> It's not free, but you can try it before you buy it.
> You will need COM to control it from Python.

This sounds like just what I need.  What is COM, and where do I get it? 
(I'm really a Linux guy. I don't ken the mysteries of Window very well.)

earl