Looking for sofware to display keystrokes as they are typed, for demos

[Benjamin Scott]

On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 7:54 AM, Ted Roche <tedroche at tedroche.com> wrote:
> It would be really helpful if there could be a pop-up or
> persistent window that would display a ring buffer of the last 4 seconds
> of keystrokes, in a large font, so it would be apparent which keystrokes
> I was hitting.

  There's an X protocol analyzer called "xmon" which I've never used,
but I was wondering if it might do the job.

  I can't find it, but while searching for it, I came across a
reference to "xkey", which is an X keystroke monitor.  Source:

http://www.deter.com/unix/

  If it worked, an xterm with a smaller-than-usual window size and a
large font would do the trick.

  It seemed to work for some X clients.  But it's got problems:

  (1) When it's running, Firefox won't accept keyboard input.  I don't
know if this is an accident, or some kind of defense mechanism against
sniffing built-in to Firefox.

  (2) Several other X clients accept key input, but xkey doesn't show it.

  (3) It doesn't seem to display [Delete] key presses.

  "xev" does show raw X events when I type in Firefox
("PropertyNotify"), so *something* is there for the sniffing.

  I know this doesn't help you, but I'm hoping it might supply a
catalyst to a successful effort.

-- Ben