XKBEVD(1)                   General Commands Manual                  XKBEVD(1)



NAME
       xkbevd - XKB event daemon

SYNOPSIS
       xkbevd [ options ]

DESCRIPTION
       This  command  is very raw and is therefore only partially implemented;
       we present it here as a rough prototype for developers, not as  a  gen-
       eral  purpose  tool  for  end  users.  Something like this might make a
       suitable replacement for xev;  I'm not signing up, mind you,  but  it's
       an interesting idea.

       The  xkbevd  event daemon listens for specified XKB events and executes
       requested commands if they occur.   The configuration file consists  of
       a list of event specification/action pairs and/or variable definitions.

       An event specification consists of a short XKB event name followed by a
       string or identifier which serves as a qualifier in parentheses;  empty
       parenthesis  indicate no qualification and serve to specify the default
       command which is applied to events which do not match any of the  other
       specifications.   The  interpretation  of  the qualifier depends on the
       type of the event:  Bell events match using the name of the bell,  mes-
       sage  events  match  on the contents of the message string and slow key
       events accept any of press, release,  accept,  or  reject.    No  other
       events are currently recognized.

       An  action  consists  of  an  optional  keyword followed by an optional
       string  argument.   Currently,  xkbev  recognizes  the  actions:  none,
       ignore, echo, printEvent, sound, and shell.  If the action is not spec-
       ified, the string is taken as the name of a sound  file  to  be  played
       unless  it  begins with an exclamation point, in which case it is taken
       as a shell command.

       Variable definitions in the argument string are  expanded  with  fields
       from  the event in question before the argument string is passed to the
       action processor.   The general syntax for a variable is either $cP  or
       $(str),  where c is a single character and str is a string of arbitrary
       length.  All parameters have both single-character and long names.

       The list of recognized parameters varies from event to event and is too
       long  to  list here right now.   This is a developer release anyway, so
       you can be expected to look at the source code (evargs.c is of particu-
       lar interest).

       The ignore, echo, printEvent, sound,and shell actions do what you would
       expect commands named ignore, echo, printEvent, sound, and shell to do,
       except  that the sound command has only been implemented and tested for
       SGI machines.   It launches an external program right now, so it should
       be  pretty easy to adapt, especially if you like audio cues that arrive
       about a half-second after you expect them.

       The only currently recognized variables are soundDirectory  and  sound-
       Cmd.  I'm sure you can figure out what they do.

OPTIONS
       -help   Prints  a  usage  message that is far more up-to-date than any-
               thing in this man page.

       -cfg file
               Specifies the configuration file to read.   If no configuration
               file is specified, xkbevd looks for ~/.xkb/xkbevd.cf and $(LIB-
               DIR)/xkb/xkbevd.cf in that order.

       -sc cmd Specifies the command used to play sounds.

       -sd directory
               Specifies a top-level directory for sound files.

       -display display
               Specifies the display to use.   If  not  present,  xkbevd  uses
               $DISPLAY.

       -bg     Tells xkbevd to fork itself (and run in the background).

       -synch  Forces synchronization of all X requests.  Slow.

       -v      Print  more information, including debugging messages.   Multi-
               ple specifications of -v cause more output, to a point.

SEE ALSO
       X(7)

COPYRIGHT
       Copyright 1995, Silicon Graphics Computer Systems Copyright 1995,  1998
       The Open Group
       See X(7) for a full statement of rights and permissions.

AUTHOR
       Erik Fortune, Silicon Graphics



X Version 11                     xkbevd 1.1.3                        XKBEVD(1)
