thotkeys

A "transparent" hotkey implementation for X11 - thotkeys will not consume any keyboard events and they will be passed down to the focused window intact.

Typically, window managers implement a hotkey feature with GrabKey. A big problem with the approach is that activating a hotkey grabs the entire keyboard until the hotkey is released. This makes it impossible to accomplish a common request: "doing something while a hotkey is held down, while allowing applications to process other key input events".

thotkeys instead uses the X Input Device Extension to monitor key events directly from an input device, but not grab it.

Installation

$ autoreconf -i
$ ./configure
$ make
$ make install

Usage

Monitor events:

# Use xorg-xinput to find out the device name/id
$ xinput list
[...]
    ↳ Topre REALFORCE 87 US                     id=11   [slave  keyboard (3)]
[...]

$ ./thotkeys --device 'Topre REALFORCE 87 US' --monitor
# released Return
--key Control_L # pressed Control_L
--key Control_L --key c # pressed c
^C

Register hotkeys:

$ ./thotkeys --device 'Topre REALFORCE 87 US' \
    --hotkey --key Control_L --key m \
    --on-press 'while :; do echo Ctrl+M is pressed; sleep 0.1; done'

$ # Registering multiple hotkeys
$ ./thotkeys --device 'Topre REALFORCE 87 US' \
    --hotkey --key Control_L --key m --on-press \
        'while :; do echo Ctrl+M is pressed; sleep 0.1; done' \
    --hotkey --key F11 --on-press \
        'while :; do echo F11 is pressed; sleep 0.1; done'

The program passed to --on-press is executed on a shell. The process will receive SIGTERM once the hotkey is released.

Limitations

The hotkey is always global and it is currently not possible to enable or disable hotkeys conditionally.
The current KeyCode <-> KeySym conversion is probably erroneous. How does it behave with a different keyboard layout, or when multiple keyboards are connected to the computer?

License

thotkeys is licensed under the MIT license. See also COPYING.