XRECORD extension no longer functions

Tim Alexander dragonfyre13 at gmail.com
Mon Jul 27 16:02:08 PDT 2009


As noted here:
http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20500
http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21971

The record extension is no longer functioning in the latest version of Xorg.
My question is, is this planned to be fixed?

There was a patch a while back submitted to the list for syndaemon that used
the xrecord extension, to minimize battery usage. There's also a handful of
applications that use the xrecord extension to capture activity on the
keyboard/mouse. This includes any automated testing tools for the Linux OS.
In addition, several VNC servers use this, including x11vnc.

Part of the issue in xrecord stems from the 1.6 version reporting that the
RECORD EXTENSION is existant, and even giving out a valid version of it.
Then, it simply doesn't capture events, due to the changes made between 1.5
and 1.6 (to my understanding).
As a followup, is there anything I can use instead of the RECORD extension
to capture all button press/release key press/release motion notify events,
for the entire system? I've got a few apps that I wrote that use the record
extension for this. Primarily this surrounds an automation system that
records clicks/keys, and then saves those off to be replayed later. This is
targeted at apps that AT-SPI doesn't work properly on, so dogtail is out.
I'd like to just hook X directly for this, as I need it globally (working
with multiple applications, not just one, so I can't hook a specific window)
but I don't know if any other extensions give this functionality. I've
looked into xinput, but that seems to be very much for a particular window.
Any ideas? Perhaps a "he's working on it, should be done shortly" for the
record extension?
Or am I posting this to the wrong list entirely? I believe I'm also
subscribed to the xorg-devel list now, so I can post there instead.
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