mouse-transparent windows

[Dan Coutu]

On Tue, 2004-07-20 at 21:20, Ferenc Gyurcsan wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Maybe somebody has done something similar before.
> What I'm trying to accomplish is to create a window that does not accept mouse 
> click events, but instead passes it to the windows under it (if any, of 
> course). So, if a mouse event is received, the window should behave just like 
> if it wasn't even there. 
> This implementation is in Qt, but that's not really relevant, I'm suspecting 
> that I'll have to write X code for this.
> Can anybody provide some clues?
> 
> Thanks,
> Ferenc

Well, I don't know if there is an easy way to do this but
there is a way to do it. The way that I know of involves
using a little known extension to the X server called
Xtrap. I was the guy that led the team that developed
this extension and am the one that made it open source
code.

What Xtrap does is provide a way to inject input data
into the X server as if it came from an actual input device.
So you could have your code catch the mouse events and
then re-send them to the window of your choice via the
Xtrap extension. You'll have to read the Xtrap source
in order to see how to use it. I know of no documentation
currently available that explains it. There may be some
code in existence that uses it (it would most likely be
code for doing testing of X itself or X applications.)

The original purpose of Xtrap was to provide a way to
automate testing of X and X applications.

Hope this helps.

-- 

Dan Coutu
Managing Director
Snowy Owl Internet Consulting, LLC
http://www.snowy-owl.com/