XRECORD extension no longer functions

[Peter Hutterer]

On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 06:02:08PM -0500, Tim Alexander wrote:
> 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?

Chris Dekter is looking at it. Last I know (of two days ago), he's looking
at the record procotol specification and figuring out how to resurrect it
with the rewritten event delivery mechanism.
I can't give you a time-line but if you contact Chris directly he might be
able to let you in on more details. If you are eager to help, please feel
free to get a setup going. The main reason why this is still broken is lack
of time.
 
> 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).

right, event processing has changed so severly that the bits that were still
in wouldn't deliver the right events anyway. Right now, all remaining places
are ifdef'd out so events are actually never passed to record.

> 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 cannot think of anything that would provide the same functionality, sorry.

Cheers,
  Peter