exclude programs from input device grabs

[Peter Hutterer]

On Thu, Jan 08, 2009 at 10:48:48PM +0000, Patrick Sebastian Zimmermann wrote:
> I want that a chosen application (in my case a hotkey daemon) receives
> all input device events even when they are grabbed by other
> applications. Even though I don't yet know the X internals, I guess
> this is not done by simply grabbing all input devices. This would allow
> any program to overhear passwords.

This is the wrong way to do it though. XEvIE has it's purpose, but this is not
it. The correct solution to your problem is to simply grab the keys on the
root window. If the key is already grabbed, then there's a change the desktop
environment/WM already grabbed the key, so you should either pick a different
shortcut, or integrate into the DE.

 On Thu, 08 Jan 2009 11:44:21 -0500
> Thomas Jaeger <thjaeger at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > What is it exactly that you want to do?  If you just want to be
> > notified of key presses, all you have to do is grab the key on all
> > the extended input devices.  In xserver 1.6, if you also want
> > applications not to receive the events,  you can change the core
> > pointer mapping.  If I understood Peter correctly, come XI 2.0, this
> > won't be necessary anymore since grabs will temporarily detach the
> > slave device.
> > 
> > Tom
> > 
> > Patrick Sebastian Zimmermann wrote:
> > > I searched around a bit.
> > > Did I get it right, that mpx changed the entire input part of X and
> > > therefor XEvIE didn't work anymore and was removed. mpx does not
> > > provide anything like input redirection, so bringing back XEvIE
> > > based on the new input logic mpx brings would not result in
> > > implementing the same feature twice, right?
> > > If this is the case I will try to bring XEvIE back.

sort-of, IIRC XEvIE was already quite broken before the mpx merge. mpx just
kicked it again to make sure it's dead.

Cheers,
  Peter