libqxt | mirror of libqxt on bitbucket | Frontend Framework library

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be easy way to translate between Qt keys and native key codes.

You can use the same mapping Qt uses for X11. I use this table for QxtGlobalShortcut library.

Original table is from qxcbkeyboard.cpp. The source file contains some functions for converting native key codes for use in Qt. The problem is that the QXcb* classes are not public, and from the looks of the headers, can break between minor Qt releases (so direct use is not advised).

I am not 100% sure I get your question, but based on the title of the question and some of the comments, here are some tips:

1. Qt can know the current global mouse position. Have you googled it? I found the following: QCursor::pos()

2. For capturing global keyboard events, you will have to give keyboard focus to a widget. There is no way in pure Qt to capture global keyboard events otherwise. I presume you could do this by having a small transparent QWidget that gives itself keyboard focus in a loop, and then never capturing any of the events (so they get passed along to other programs), but I never tested so YMMV.

3. To create a "system level background routine", you will have to start a daemon process. To do this I can recommend looking at documentation and examples of QProcess & friends. Basically what you do ay startup of you app, the app starts a second instance of itself using a special command line parameter that tell that second child process to go in the background. Then the parent process will quit, leaving the child process behind running in the background.

4. This daemon will run whatever code it needs in an event loop which is the way of Qt programs. Whenever it receives a noteworthy event, you can process and act on those events to your heart's content. If you need to get events from non-Qt contexts, simply create a QTimer and poll whatever interface you need for events.

5. Once an event occurs, you can show a QWidgets at the exact position you want on the screen (howto here).

6. Once your daemon process works, the next is figuring out how to deploy it. Most daemons need to be installed as services into the OS for them to be reliably started on boot. Each window environment may have their own provisioning of such "run until logout" deployments. If you are feeling especially fancy, the program intself may do the deployment routine needed before it forks, which makes it plug-and-play.