NAME
irxevent - infrared X-event sender
SYNOPSIS
irxevent [option]... [config file]
DESCRIPTION
Irxevent is a program that I wrote to send button clicks and key
presses to X applications triggered by a LIRC driven remote control.
You can control your favorite CD/MP3 player or your TV tuner program or
any other X application that responds to keyboard or mouse input. If
you like to you can send emacs ^X^S from your armchair.
Irxevent is a complement to irexec and irpty.
-d --daemon
fork and run in background
-h --help
display usage summary
-V --version
display version
FILES
Irxevent works with the same config file as irexec and irpty
(~/.lircrc). For a complete sample .lircrc look at examples/lircrc.
Part of your .lircrc could look like this:
begin
prog = irxevent
button = VIDEO_UP
config = Key SHIFT-KP_Add CurrentWindow
end
begin
prog = irxevent
button = VIDEO_DOWN
config = Key SHIFT-KP_Subtract CurrentWindow
end
begin
prog = irxevent
button = STOP
config = Key ctrl-c CurrentWindow
end
begin
prog = irxevent
button = 0
config = Key f xawtv
config = Key f xawtv
end
begin
prog = irxevent
button = POWER
config = Key q xawtv
end
begin
prog = irxevent
button = CH_DOWN
config = Button 1 329 92 kscd
end
begin
prog = irxevent
button = UP
config = Button 1 110 80 GQmpeg
end
begin
prog = irxevent
button = DOWN
config = Button 1 130 80 GQmpeg
end
Simply said config = lines may look like this:
config = Key [shift-][ctrl-][alt-]<key> [Focus] <windowname>
| WindowID <id> | CurrentWindow | RootWindow
config = Button <button> <x> <y> [Focus] <windowname> | WindowID <id>
| CurrentWindow | RootWindow
config = xy_Key <x> <y> [shift-][ctrl-][alt-]<key> [Focus]
<windowname> | WindowID id | CurrentWindow | RootWindow
some more examples:
config = Key Up xawtv
config = Key Down xawtv
config = Button 1 50 110 xclickme
config = Key q xawtv
config = Key ctrl-c mpg123
config = Key shift-Page_Up rxvt
In BNF this looks like:
LINE = "config =" <KEY|BUTTON|XYKEY> <TARGET> |
"config =" <KEY|BUTTON|XYKEY> "Focus" <TARGET>
XYKEY = "xy_Key" <x_position> <y_position> <MOD><KEYSPEC>
KEY = "Key" <MOD><KEYSPEC>
MOD = ["shift-"]["numlock-"]["ctrl-"]["alt-"]["meta-"]
["numlock-"]["mod3-"]["mod4-"]["mod5-"]["altgr-"]["scrlock-"]
KEYSPEC = Keyname | "KeySym:"KeySym | "KeyCode:"KeyCode
BUTTON = "Button" <1..5> <x_position> <y_position>
TARGET = Windowname | "WindowID" id | "CurrentWindow" | "RootWindow"
Keyname:
is the key symbol that is declared in X windows. E.g. "Up" refers
to the cursor arrow pointing up. "KP_Add" is the plus sign on the
key pad. Just take a look at irxevent.keys (in the documentation
directory) if you are not sure about a symbol's name.
KeySym:
number as returned by XStringToKeysym(3x).
KeyCode:
number as returned by XKeysymToKeycode(3x).
Windowname:
can be the first characters of the window name displayed by the
window manager or the name that is displayed below the icon. Some
programs use the name displayed by the window manager to show a
lot of status information but don't change the icon name (like
xawtv). Others append information to the window name ("GQmpeg -
kill_windooz.mp3"). If neither window name nor icon name match the
given Windowname information from XClassHint(3x) will be checked.
CurrentWindow:
refers to the active window as returned by XGetInputFocus(3x).
Most times this is the window with your mouse pointer in it.
RootWindow:
refers to the root window as returned by RootWindow(3x). You may
need this to send events to the window manager.
WindowID id:
refers to the window with window identifier id. id should be a
decimal number. It is useful when irxevent can't find the desired
window by other means.
Focus:
will send the specified event to the given window only if it
currently has the input focus. This of course does not make much
sense when combined with CurrentWindow.
TROUBLESHOOTING
If you have problems finding the coordinates for a button click you can
try xev -id <window_id>. The window_id can be found using xwininfo. If
xev and xwininfo are not part of your distribution you can find them at
a FTP server using the search engine at: http://ftpsearch.ntnu.no/ .
xev also reports the names of key symbols like "Control_L" (your left
control key) or "KP_Subtract" (the 'minus' key on your keypad).
There are programs that do not accept any synthetic X-events by default
because they can cause security problems. Currently xterm and xemacs
are known to ignore events simulated by irxevent.
You can however make xterm accept external events by enabling "Allow
SendEvents" in the "Main Options" (hold down the Ctrl button and press
the left mouse button inside the xterm window). You can as well place
this line into your .Xresources file to change this permanently:
XTerm.vt100.allowSendEvents: true
Yet another possibility is to start xterm like this:
xterm -xrm "XTerm.vt100.allowSendEvents: true"
xemacs will accept events if you set a built-in variable. The following
was taken from the online help:
`x-allow-sendevents' is a built-in boolean variable.
Value: t
Documentation:
*Non-nil means to allow synthetic events. Nil means they are
ignored.
Beware: allowing emacs to process SendEvents opens a big security
hole.
In order to allow events you have to evaluate this lisp code (press
Meta-x and enter the following expression):
(setq x-allow-sendevents t)
Placing this line into your .xemacs-options file should have the
same result.
If you have problems sending events please drop me an email.
AUTHOR
Written by Heinrich Langos <heinrich@mad.scientist.com>.
SEE ALSO
The documentation for lirc is maintained as html pages. They are
located under html/ in the documentation directory.