x2x − X to X connection
x2x <[−to <DISPLAY>] | [−fromwin | −from <DISPLAY>]> [options...]
x2x allows the keyboard and mouse on one ("from") X display to be used to control another ("to") X display. Since x2x uses the XTEST extension, the "to" X display must support XTEST.
If x2x is built under Cygwin (on Windows XP or Windows 2000) then the −fromwin option may be specified to allow the "from" display to be the Windows desktop. (The Cygwin build also supports use of an X display for the "from" screen). Use of −fromwin sets the default behaviour as if the −big −west −capslockhack options had also been given.
In the default interface, x2x puts a window on the "from" display. This window is labeled with the name of the "to" display. Keystrokes typed into this window go to the window on the "to" display that has the input focus. Clicking on the x2x window causes the mouse on the "from" display to control the cursor on the "to" display. Performing a subsequent multiple button click on the "to" display returns control to the "from" display.
If the −fromwin, −north, −south, −east or −west options are specified on the command line, x2x starts up with a different interface. When the mouse moves to the top, bottom, east side or west side of the default screen on the "from" display, the cursor slides over to the "to" display. When the mouse returns to to side of the "to" display that it entered, it slides back onto the "from" display.
Unless the −nosel option is specified, x2x relays X selections from one display to the other. (If −fromwin is specified then the X selection is relayed to and from the Windows clipboard as text strings).
Here are a few hints for eXcursion users (based on Intel version 2.1.309). First, use the −big option. Second, in the control panel, under mouse, check the box that enables "Automatically Capture Text on Button Up." X selections will then automatically move into the Windows clipboard. As is the case with all X applications running on 2.1.309 (including x2x), you will need to do an extra mouse click after performing the X selection for this operation to work. x2x is known to work poorly with eXcursion running on Windows 95, probably due to the Windows 95 task scheduler. x2x does work well with eXcursion running on Windows NT.
The hints for eXcursion are also valid for Exceed, with the exception that X selections work better, as long as you are using x2x version 1.25 or later.
Either the
−to option or the −from option (or both) must be
specified.
−to display
Indicates the ("to") display that is remotely controlled by the "from" display. Default is equivalent to the default display.
−from display
Indicates the ("from") display that remotely controls the "to" display. Default is equivalent to the default display.
−fromwin
Available when x2x is built in the Cygwin environment. This option indicates the ("from") display should be the Windows desktop. In this case the "to" display must be specified with the −to option. Setting this option forces −big and sets the default to −west −capslockhack
The −fromwin option works best when Windows is configured for focus-follows-mouse also known as X Mouse. This can be set using TweakUI for Windows XP (on the Mouse/X-Mouse panel) or the XMouse2000 program for Windows 2000. If Windows is set for its default behaviour x2x will attempt to get the keyboard and mouse focus but may not succeed. (The Windows XP TweakUI has a General/Focus option that can be unchecked to allow applications to steal the focus.) If it fails the first try, x2x tries quite hard to get the focus!
If the "to" display supports mouse buttons 4 and 5 then mouse wheel events on the Windows side are translated to clicks of buttons 4 and 5 on the X display. This matches with XFree86 servers using Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5".
A link may be created on the Windows desktop to conveniently launch x2x. Assuming cygwin is installed to C:\cygwin and x2x.exe is in /usr/X11R6/bin then the link properties should be set to:
Target:
C:\cygwin\usr\X11R6\bin\run.exe /usr/X11R6/bin/x2x −fromwin −to somewhere:0.0 −east
Start In: C:\cygwin\usr\X11R6\bin
The "Start In" option is important to allow DLLs to be loaded and C:\cygwin\bin must be on the Windows PATH to allow other DLLs to be loaded. (If either of these are incorrect, launching the application tends to silently fail.)
There are two magic key combinations activated by −fromwin:
RightAlt-Home: Forces the focus back to Windows without needing the mouse to be moved. Useful when some popup window on the Windows side grabs the mouse!
RightAlt-End: Exit x2x
|
−north |
Slide off the north side of the "to" display onto the "from" display.
|
−south |
Slide off the south side of the "to" display onto the "from" display.
|
−east |
Slide off the east side of the "to" display onto the "from" display.
|
−west |
Slide off the west side of the "to" display onto the "from" display.
−font fontname
The font used in the x2x window. (Overridden by −east or −west.)
−geometry specification
The X geometry specification for the x2x window. (Overridden by −north, −south, −east or −west.)
|
−wait |
Tells x2x to poll the "to" and "from" displays at startup until they are ready. Useful for login scripts.
|
−big |
Workaround for a bug in the cursor grab implementations of at least one X server. Put a big window over the "from" display in order to force the X server to track the cursor. (This option is forced by the −fromwin option).
−buttonblock
If this option is enabled with −north, −south, −east or −west, the cursor will not slide back onto the "from" display when one or more mouse buttons are pressed.
−buttonmap button# "KeySym ..."
Map a mouse button to one or more keyboard events on the "to" display. This is useful if you have a mouse with more buttons than the remote X server can handle (e.g. a wheel mouse on a PC, merged with a Sun/Sparc OpenWindows display).
−nomouse
Don’t capture the mouse. (Overridden by −north, −south, −east or −west.)
−nopointermap
Since x2x uses XTEST, which sends input at a lower level than the pointer button mapping, x2x needs to understand the "to" display’s button mapping and do appropriate conversion. Use this option to turn off the pointer button conversion.
|
−nosel |
Don’t relay the X selection between displays.
−noautoup
Normally, the autoup feature in x2x automatically lifts up all keys and mouse buttons when it removes the cursor from the "from" display. Note: the autoup feature changes the state of lock functions like Caps Lock. The state of the lock function may not correspond to the state of the keyboard LEDs! To disable this feature, use the −noautoup command line option.
−resurface
Ugly hack to work-around window manager ugliness. The −north, −south, −east and −west modes actually put a small window on the side of the "from" display. This option causes this window to resurface itself if another window ever obscures it. This option can cause really nasty behavior if another application tries to do the same thing. Useful for login scripts.
−win-output
Makes the small window ("trigger window") on the side of the "from" display an InputOutput window instead of an InputOnly window. Visibility notification events are never generated for InputOnly window, therefore -resurface would not work for InputOnly window. Use -win-output together with -resurface.
−win-transparent
Makes the small window ("trigger window") transparent. Use with -win-output option.
−struts
Advertise struts in _NET_WM_STRUT
Once upon a time, the trigger window was a regular window and could be arbitrarily stacked. If obscured it would stop working. Later the trigger window became a dock, to be treated specially by the window manager. The EWMH spec suggests placing docks over all other windows... but some window managers place docks below before unmapping them. XMonad is one such window manager. In this case we would like to advertise struts - reserved space along screen edges that is not normally obscured. However this should not happen if the dock is already above all windows. And thus the new ’−struts’ settings is born, which uses the ’_NET_WM_STRUT’ property.
Note that this is a less hacky alternative to ’−resurface’.
−capslockhack
Ugly hack to work-around the situation in which the "to" Xserver doesn’t seem to honor the state of the CapsLock on the "from" Xserver. This is the default when the −fromwin option is given (although the hack used is slightly less ugly).
−nocapslockhack
Disable the −capslockhack behaviour. Used to change the default behaviour after the −fromwin option is specified.
−clipcheck
Check that clipboard entries are regular strings (XA_STRING) before forwarding to Windows. Enabling this is safer but may prevent copying with certain setups (eg from emacs under KDE/XFree).
−shadow display
Also sends mouse movements and keystrokes to this display. Useful for demos. Amaze your friends: specify multiple shadows.
−sticky sticky-key
This option is primarily for "lock" keys like Caps_Lock. If a lock key only seems to work on every other press, try this option. The sticky option prevents autoup for the specified key. Look in /usr/include/X11/keysymdef.h for a list of valid names of keys (remove the leading XK_).
−singlesticky
Some X servers generate both a key down and a key up when a lock key is toggled. Some X servers generate a key down when a lock key is activated and a key up only when it is deactivated. This option will allow an X server with the former behavior to control one with the latter behavior. Use this if Caps_Lock lock is behaving like shift.
−label label
Override the label of the control window (useful when running over ssh). The label is the text displayed within the control window.
−title title
Override the title of the control window (useful when running over ssh).
−copyright
Prints the full copyright for the x2x code.
−noscale
This option turns off the mouse scaling. In some circumstances, the remote screen is so different in physical size or resolution that the normal mouse scaling applied by x2x distorts the mouse movement so much as to be practially unusable. Note: this is only useful if the remote screen is lower resolution than the local screen and also causes the remote mouse pointer to warp around when it hits the edges.
−completeregionleft
Describes leftmost coordinate of complete rectangle region in from-display. If from-display is configured with multiple monitors and they have different resolution, few regions that does not belongs to any monitor becomes dead space that mouse cannot move in. In the case, the dead space can be mapped to legal region of to-display. If complete region in from-display is specified, X2X maps only complete region to to-display and avoid the dead, but legal regions.
−completeregionright
Describes rightmost coordinate of complete rectangle region in from-display.
−completeregionup
Describes uppermost coordinate of complete rectangle region in from-display.
−completeregionlow
Describes lowermost coordinate of complete rectangle region in from-display.
Calling the
system whose keyboard is to be used "primary" and
the other system "secondary", you need to specify
either −from primary-x-display or −to
secondary-x-display. The x2x program can be run on either
system. The easiest way to maintain security is to tunnel an
X connection over ssh. Since x2x can be run on either
computer, it can be invoked in either of the following ways,
where we assume the local display on each system is :0.
run indirectly on secondary:
primary $ ssh −X secondary x2x −to :0 −east
run indirectly on primary:
secondary $ ssh −X primary x2x −from :0 −west
run directly indirectly on primary:
primary $ ssh −A secondary env DISPLAY=:0.0 ssh −X primary x2x −from :0 −east
If your primary display is configured with several monitors having different resolutions, −completeregion(left|up|right|low) options can be helpful. suppose that you have two monitors connected to the primary system and the resolution of the left-side monitor is 300x300 while the right-side one is 400x400. Also, you aligned these two monitors to be vertically centric. Therefore, your primary system has virtually 700x400 resolution.
The left monitor covers (0,50,300,350) of the virtual total resolution while the right monitor covers (300,0,700,400). The four numbers each represent left, top, right, and bottom. Also, you have two dead spaces: (0,0,300,50) and (0,350,300,400). Thus, the complete square region for this configuration would be (0,50,700,350).
If no explicit description is provided, the x2x recognizes the virtual total resolution (0,0,700,400) only. As a consequence, the dead space region cannot be reached in the secondary system. You can solve this problem by teaching x2x that the real complete square region for the secondary system (0,50,700,350) using the −comptereregion(left|up|right|low) options as below:
−completeregionleft 0 −completeregionup 50 -completeregionright 700 -completeregionlow 350
The synergy program ⟨URL: http://synergy-project.org ⟩ has similar functionality to that of x2x, supports multiple platforms, and when I try to use it my X session crashes.
There is a nice Linux Journal article on x2x ⟨URL: http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/share-keyboardmouse-between-multiple-computers-x2x ⟩.
David Chaiken
<[email protected]>
Mark Hayter (−fromwin code, thanks to the WinVNC
sources)
Addition of −north and −south options by Charles
Briscoe-Smith <[email protected]>.
Current maintaner is Mikhail Gusarov
<[email protected]>
This software is experimental! Heaven help you if your network connection should go down. Caveat hacker. TANSTAAFL.
The x2x repository and issue tracker ⟨URL: http://github.com/dottedmag/x2x ⟩ has moved to github.
When using the −fromwin option if the Ctrl-Alt-Del keysequence is used while the mouse is forwarded to the X display then the Ctrl and Alt key press events are reported to x2x and forwarded but no other key events are generated. Thus if the Ctrl-Alt-Del sequence is used to manually lock the Windows display when the display is unlocked the mouse will still be forwarded to the X screen and the X server will believe Ctrl and Alt are still pressed. Pressing and releasing Ctrl and Alt should restore correct operation, as should returning the mouse to the Windows display (or using the RightAlt-Home magic key sequence).
If you have trouble with some keys not working, try setting the keymaps on both systems to be the same using setxkbmap. If that’s not enough, make sure that the output of setxkbmap −query is identical on both machines.
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