X level solution for VKB and Minimo interaction

These days I have been in touch with some low level (at least in my option) code. I've gone deeply down toward the "ugly" X level programming. Lots of Display, Window, RootWindow, Atom , blablabla ...

Anyways, it was good to have an idea about it , and mainly because through this I got the built-in maemo's virtual keyboard popping up/hiding when focus in/out event occur on minimo, without any gtk-based stuff.

Follows some lines of code that popup vbk manually for you:

(...)
// same as XOpenDisplay (0)?
Display *display = GDK_DISPLAY ();
if (!display) return ;

Atom hildonWindow;

hildonWindow = XInternAtom (display, "_HILDON_IM_WINDOW", true); // original code from Tim.

static char *XAtomNames[] = {"WINDOW"};
static Atom XAtoms[ARRAY_LENGTH(XAtomNames)];

// get needed atoms
XInternAtoms(display, XAtomNames, ARRAY_LENGTH(XAtomNames), False, XAtoms);

if (hildonWindow != None) {
Atom atomType;
int atomFormat;
int res;
unsigned long atomItems;
unsigned long atomBytes;
unsigned char* atomProperties;
::Window imWindow;

// this code fragment, I can get from widget/src/gtksuperwin/gtkmozarea.c:310
// gdk_property_get ?????
res=XGetWindowProperty(display,
RootWindow (display,XDefaultScreen(display)), hildonWindow, 0, 1, false, XAtoms[0],
&atomType, &atomFormat, &atomItems, &atomBytes, &atomProperties);

if (res!=Success || atomProperties==NULL) {
std::cout << "Cannot get IM window" <<>

imWindow=reinterpret_cast< ::Window*>(atomProperties)[0];
std::cout << "Acquire " <<>window << " " <<>

::XEvent event;

memset(&event,0,sizeof(event));
event.xclient.type=ClientMessage;
event.xclient.window=imWindow;
event.xclient.message_type=XInternAtom(display,"_HILDON_IM_ACTIVATE",False);
event.xclient.format=8;
// event.xclient.data.l[0]=RootWindow (display,XDefaultScreen(display));
// event.xclient.data.l[1]=RootWindow (display,XDefaultScreen(display));
event.xclient.data.l[2]=0x08;
event.xclient.data.l[3]=0x00400007;
event.xclient.data.l[4]=0;
if (XSendEvent(display,imWindow,False,NoEventMask,&event)==0) {
std::cerr << "Error while sending vk-1" <<>

event.xclient.message_type= XInternAtom(display,"_HILDON_IM_ACTIVATE",False);
event.xclient.data.l[2]=0x09;

if (XSendEvent(display,imWindow,False,NoEventMask,&event)==0) {
std::cerr << "Error while sending vk-7" <<>
} // end
(...)

ps: I got great support on this coming from Tim (nice German guy) who is also porting a non-gtk application to maemo 2.0. Most of the code above comes from his Illumination app.

--Antonio Gomes