Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU!jim From: jim@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU (Jim Fulton) Newsgroups: comp.windows.x Subject: Re: Intercepting key events by a window manager Message-ID: <8905242042.AA02604@expo.lcs.mit.edu> Date: 24 May 89 20:42:44 GMT References: Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU Organization: X Consortium, MIT Laboratory for Computer Science Lines: 18 > About the only shortcoming I see is that it doesn't let you bind to an > arbitrary key sequence but only to specialized function keys; ie, I > would have to say "F1" rather than "^[1A." or whatever the key > sequence for F1 is. What does "whatever the key sequence for F1 is" mean for a clock, or any other non-terminal emulator application? When you press F1 on the keyboard, the server sends an event containing a server-dependent "key code" (similar to a make/break code) to the client. The application can then map that keycode into a "key symbol" (called keysym, for short) that tells the client what is engraved on the key (in this case "F1"). The application can then do with this whatever it wants. Textual applications such as xterm will often map this into a byte sequence as if it had been typed on a keyboard attached to this type of terminal (e.g. vt100, h19, etc.). Window managers want to deal with the actual keysyms.