How to substitute keyboard input on a Sun

Tom Chatt tom at flood.com
Tue Oct 16 15:08:14 AEST 1990


I have a problem that perhaps some SunOS-wizard can tell me how to solve.
I would like to have a program introduce characters into the operating
system just as if they had been typed at the keyboard. Specifically, I
want these chars to appear to the windowing system as if they had been
typed at the keyboard (and thus get routed by the windowing system to
the window currently with the input focus). I would like this to work for
both Sunview and X. I would like to not replace the real keyboard, but
supplement it.

These are some things I have considered and dismissed:

1) Use win_setkbd to reset the distinguished keyboard VUID.
   This replaces, rather than supplements the real keyboard.
   This is also SunView-specific and will not work for X (true?).

2) Write my own VUID and add it with win_set_input_device
   SunView-specific and will not work for X (true?)
   Looks like scads of work -- basically writing a whole device driver.

3) Use the TIOCSTI ioctl
   This works to supply chars to a specific tty and/or to the "console",
     but I want to get "behind" the windowing system. A TIOCSTI on
     /dev/kbd (or /dev/win0) is in concept what I want, but those
     devices don't support that ioctl.

Any ideas? Please e-mail responses to me (tom at flood.com) and I will
summarize responses. Your help will be appreciated!
-- 
Tom Chatt                        \   Don't take offense, take action.
Internet: tom at flood.com           \    Speak up. When we remain silent,
UUCP: ...!uunet!flood!tom        / \     we oppress ourselves.



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