[SOLVED] How do I run a key press as a command?

[urukrama]

I've found what I was looking for. With xmacro and following these instructions, I first recorded the keypress I wanted to simulate (with xmacrorec), and can now rerun that anytime I want (with xmacroplay).

Problem solved.

[ReiKn]

Sorry to bring this up again, but I haven't had any luck so far. I have tried all the suggestions, but nothing did what I wanted (I couldn't quite grasp what ReiKn and napsilan suggested, though).

To clarify why I want to achieve this, I'll give an example of why I want to use a command to simulate a keypress. When running, tilda is only shown when a particular key is pressed (F1) by default. I would like to bind that to a mouse action in Openbox or Pekwm, but I can only bind commands (or Openbox and Pekwm actions) to mouse actions in those window managers. That is why I would like to simulate a keypress.

The keys I am interested in are not the general letters or numbers, but things like F1-F12, Scroll_Lock, Print_Screen, etc.

So, any further suggestions?

You could try the program called xautomation (sudo apt-get install xautomation) . Then for sending F1 the call is

xte "key F1"

[urukrama]

Thanks, that is a little simpler.

[Acglaphotis]

try xsend, it does what you are looking for.

[durand]

Try xkbevd.

E.g.

/usr/bin/xvkbd -xsendevent -text "\[Alt_L]\[Left]"

Will send the Alt+Left key combination.

Thanks, that works great for my purposes! (Using spotify as an alarm clock)

[lazyr]

I find the easiest way to use xdotool (it's in the universe repository).

You can just use commands like:

xdotool key Ctrl+c
xdotool key Super+a
xdotool key Control+Alt+Right
xdotool key Control+Alt+Left

[manoj_isi]

xdotool did my job.. thanx all of you for this wonderful post..


linux rocks

[Zorgoth]

Yay for xdotool!

[bernabap]

I need help ... I bought a multimedia control (http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.26368) for use with XBMC. This control comes with four shortcut keys already set to "Ctrl Alt A", "Ctrl Alt B", "Ctrl Alt C" and "Ctrl Alt D". I wanted to create a script to simulate the pressure of "i" key, which opens in XBMC the information of the selected movie. So I could create a shortcut to this script that has already set in my control to simulate the pressure of that key.

In Windows xp I could do exactly what I want to creating a VBScript like this:


Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject ("WScript.Shell")

WshShell.SendKeys "{i}"
WScript.Sleep 10

After I created a shortcut to this script with "Ctrl Alt D", goes like every time I open XBMC and select a movie I can click on the button on my control that is set to "Ctrl Alt D" and display the Movie information.

Worked perfect in XP but I really want to get it working in Ubuntu!

I've tried to create several scripts and configured to run with the shortcut "Ctrl Alt D", but none of them work in XBMC.

I tried the following ways:

# First using xautomation:
/usr/bin/xte "key i";

# Attempt 2 with xdotool:
xdotool key i

These two options only work running through the terminal, nothing was displayed by the shortcut.

# Third option xkbevd:
/usr/bin/xvkbd-xsendevent-text "\ [i]"

This method worked using the key for that shortcut in my control displaying the letter "i" in the terminal, in gedit, within vim, but for some reason does not work in XBMC. Neither worked in Google search.

Anyone have any ideas?

[shafin]

Thanks a lot.
I just used this to bind firefox 4 panorama to a screen edge