How to know which windows are associated to a process

[lrleon]

Hi everybody

I must write an application that sends the keystrokes to a browser. I
found one thread in this forum called " XSendEvent to Child Windows",
which suggests to me I can write my application with xlib. In fact, it
seems that the author was almost exactly in the same situation that me.

However, in order to be able to grabb the keystrokes an send then to a
window, first I have identify the windows that are associated to the
browser. My problem is that I do not know a objective form to determine
whether a window is or associated to the browser.

I would say that if X11 and, consequently, xlib, had a way to associate
the windows to the process that created them, then by this way, I would
identify the windows without ambiguities. But it seems that doc of xlib
does not mention schemes of the sort.

Could somebody give lights me on the matter?

Thanks,

LL

[wje_lf]

The X-WIndow system has no facility for this. In fact, there is no guarantee that the client process is even running on the same machine as the X-Window system; all the actions requested by the client can be sent over a network.

I do this on a regular basis. I'm on machine "fred", and I'll telnet over to machine "barney" and run a client (for example, a browser) on barney, from fred. But before running that client on barney, I'll set the DISPLAY environment variable to ensure that it's the X-Window server on fred, not barney, that actually displays the windows on its screen. At no point am I in physical or visual contact with barney.

I could use XSendEvent to send events to a window, as you plan to do. I could do that from a client running on fred, or barney, or some third system.

So the X-Window system has no knowledge of the processes which request that windows be created, since those processes need not even be on the same host as the X-Window server (and your physical screen).