Type into multiple x windows at once
xduplic-copier
xduplic-copier lets you type into multiple X windows at once.
It has a very basic user interface for selecting which windows to type into.
xduplic-copier ignores its command-line arguments.
xduplic-copier puts up a small window with some text in it. It has two modes:
Idle: "i 0" (red); Typing "T count" (green)
If you type keystrokes into xduplic-copier, they will be replicated to all the selected windows (if there are any). (You can also type into the selected windows individually in the normal way.) count is the number of selected windows. The starting mode is Idle; you should left-click to start selecting.
Selecting: "S count" (white)
In this mode xduplic-copier has grabbed the mouse pointer and you can indicate which windows you are going to want to type into.
Left-click in xduplic-copier
Switch between typing and selecting modes.
Right-click in xduplic-copier
Quit.
Left-click in another window while selecting
Select this window. (Beeps if already selected.)
Right-click in another window while selecting
Deselect this window. (Beeps if not selected.)
Right-click in root window (ie, desktop background) while selecting
Deselect all windows.
Q key while selecting
Quits.
xduplic-copier does its work by generating synthetic events for the selected windows, using XSendEvent. Unfortunately the xterm authors think that allowing XSendEvent is a security problem; they are wrong: any untrusted person can already take over your xterms anyway. But the xterm authors have configured xterm to discard synthetic events by default.
You can solve this at runtime by bringing up the ctrl-leftbutton menu in each xterm, and ticking the option "Allow SendEvents". Or you can set the allowSendEvents in your xterm X resources.
Neither of these significantly reduce your security. Indeed, xterm itself allows these properties to be set via the X toolkit system's remote widget property setting arrangements - so it would be possible for xduplic-copier to set this property itself on any xterms it encountered. Unfortunately doing so would be a lot of tedious programming.
If one of the windows you have selected is closed, and you try typing, xduplic-copier will crash due to an unhandled X11 error. If you notice that you have got into this state, you cannot retain your set of selected windows because there is no way to click on the now-destroyed window to deselect it. You can keep xduplic-copier from crashing by right-clicking on the background in selecting mode, and then reselecting all your windows, which may be marginally more convenient than restarting it.
The UI is perhaps excessively sparse.
Ian Jackson <[email protected]> wrote xduplic-copier some time in 2002, and updated it in 2013. The manpage is from 2013.
xduplic-copier is govered by the GNU GPL, v3 or later.