HowTo: Read information from a client?

Question

Ok, here's the skinny: I'm a pretty smart guy and an amateur coder. I've coded in several languages (Java, C#, VB.net, Visual Foxpro, C) and I use coding to make my computer life easier. I'm big into automation and using a program as an "agent" which can act autonomously. I would like to know how I can access the actual text inside of an application. There are several different applications for this knowledge but I really don't know where or how to start. I've looked on the web some but by and large I'm unable to find something which suits my needs. Maybe my google skills are lacking, I dunno. Basically I want to ferret around inside of a few different applications and extract the text that is on the screen to an application so that I can write an app to respond automatically for me. I'd like to avoid something as complex as hooks but, if that's required, I guess I'm going to have to wrap my mind around it. Please, let me know the best way to do this. Any help is greatly appreciated!