Subject: Re: bug#66765: closed (Re: bug#66765: 30.0.50; Building emacs with xinput2 breaks receiving XSendEvent events)

From: Ami Fischman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2023 10:52:49 -0700

> If instead I do `xdotool key h` in an emacs *shell* buffer then the
> next command line has an `h` already present, suggesting that emacs
> did indeed receive that xdotool's event.

I was unable to get xdotool to send to emacs from outside of emacs, so
went digging into xdotool, and apparently it's because it only uses
XTEST when sending to the current window, otherwise it uses XSendEvent
directly: https://github.com/jordansissel/xdotool/blob/7b63eb46631815fd4a10e1fd78a37213250d1193/xdo.c#L1557
Unless I misunderstood your earlier suggestion about how to use
xdotool, it doesn't seem like a usable alternative for sending events
to emacs from outside emacs (since emacs won't be the current window).

FWIW I'm looking at patching ratpoison to use XTEST for my own use,
though I doubt it'll be accepted upstream as development has mostly
stopped there.

Stepping back a bit from the specifics of Emacs and ratpoison, naively
it seems unfortunate that X11 programs that have been working for
decades should need to be modified to use similar-but-different APIs.
Do you know whether the XInput2 people are aware of / at peace with
this limitation, or is this something worth bringing up with them?