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  general  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, message 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 specified, 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 $c 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 particular 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 soundCmd.  I'm sure you can
       figure out what they do.

OPTIONS

       -help   Prints a usage message that is far more up-to-date than anything 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 $(LIBDIR)/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.  Multiple specifications of
               -v cause more output, to a point.

       -version
               Prints the program version and exits.

SEE ALSO

       xev(1), xkbwatch(1), 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