I should preface by saying that I reverse-engineered this, based on time-consuming searches, and by picking up some clues in xorg's source. This was a long time ago, I don't remember where I found everything, I forgot, and only have the end results. This is what I have:
https://github.com/svarshavchik/libcxxw/blob/master/keysyms.C You need the keycode and the current input mask. keysym_lookup() produces both a unicode character and a keysym. Note that this deals with keyboard events only. Other kinds of X interactions will introduce you to wonderful compound_text encoding. That's going to be its own slice of heaven. On Mon, Feb 14, 2022 at 4:58 AM Andrew Bainbridge <a...@deadfrog.co.uk> wrote: > > I tried to do something similar and had the same experience. I still don't > know how to convert keyboard events to something useful like UTF-8. (I was > actually aiming for Latin-1 to start with). > > My terrible code is here: > https://github.com/abainbridge/deadfrog-lib/blob/master/src/df_window_x11.cpp > > The keycode conversions are done in x11KeycodeToDfKeycode() and > dfKeycodeToAscii(). > > If someone would like to tell me (and John) how to do better, that'd be > great, as long as it doesn't involve adding any dependencies to my code :-) > > - Andy > > On Sun, Feb 13, 2022, at 5:01 PM, John Found wrote: > > Hi. > > I am trying to create a X client that to communicate to X server by the > raw protocol, not using any libraries, such as XLib or XCB. > > While with the graphics part it was simple and straightforward task, > solved by simply following the protocol (The documentation on X11 is > pretty complete and well written) and extensions documentation is > available (although the MIT-SHM documentation on the protocol does not > exists at all), I have stuck with the keyboard part of > the protocol. > > The biggest problem is the conversion from the keycodes into the > Unicode characters (of course where it is possible). > > Do I need XKEYBOARD extension? On only XINPUT. Or both. The > documentation is complex and poorly written. I have a feeling that part > of it was written not to be useful, but simply because it had to be > written. > > So, the question: > > What is the simplest, canonical, expected way to handle the keyboard > events in X protocol in order to obtain the Unicode codes of the > pressed keys? In raw protocol therms. And supporting multiple > languages, of course. > > I understand that some processing on the client side is required, but I > am missing the whole picture of the process. > > Best Regards. > John Found > >