typing characters not present on your keyboard (was Re: OT What does RET (Enter) do and how does it do it ??)

[Marko Vojinovic]

On Sunday 26 August 2007 04:36, Tim wrote:
> On Sat, 2007-08-25 at 20:42 +0000, Marko Vojinovic wrote:
> > I had such a situation some time ago. I was to write a custom app that
> > needed *full control* of the keyboard (meaning that no keypress gets
> > swallowed by any other app, no matter focus etc), and after reading all
> > relevant HOWTOs, I finally understood the process of reading off keyboard
> > input. But, there was nothing in the docs telling me how to lock the
> > keyboard for my app. So, after some digging, I downloaded the very source
> > code for the simple "showkey" program, and studied it. There, and only
> > there, I actually found relevant info on what I needed to do in my app.
> > After that, life was beautiful... ;-)
>
> Speaking of such things, do you understand how xmodmap works?

No, I don't. I gave up on understanding X keyboard handling. For the purpose 
of writing my app, it was enough to completely bypass X and read the keyboard 
stream directly.

X has a very complicated while simultaneously very limited (ie. stupid) 
keyboard controls. It does not make the difference between left ctrl and 
right ctrl, for example (if the keyboard happens to have both). Same for 
shift keys. While it is enough for a typical mouse-oriented user, it fails to 
support anything more advanced in terms of keyboard.
 
:-)
Marko

Marko Vojinovic
Institute of Physics
University of Belgrade
======================
e-mail: vmarko at phy.bg.ac.yu