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).

AUTHOR

       Erik Fortune, Silicon Graphics

X Version 11                                      xkbevd 1.1.5                                         XKBEVD(1)