hpr1750 :: xclip, xdotool, xvkbd: 3 CLI Linux tools for RSI sufferers
3 command-line tools that save me hundreds of keystrokes a day.
Hosted by Jon Kulp on Friday, 2015-04-17 is flagged as Clean and is released under a CC-BY-SA license.
Accessibility, Linux, scripting, command line.
9.
The show is available on the Internet Archive at: https://archive.org/details/hpr1750
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Accessibility.
Shows about tearing down the barriers for our fellow hackers.
Basic commands
Type the words "foo bar" with xvkbd:
xvkbd -xsendevent -secure -text 'foo bar'
Types out the entire contents of the file "foobar.txt" with xvkbd:
xvkbd -xsendevent -secure -file "foobar.txt"
Send text to the clipboard:
xclip -i
Send clipboard contents to standard output:
xclip -o
Do virtual Ctrl+C key combination with xdotool:
xdotool key Control+c
Save this complicated command as an environment variable—then the variable "$KEYPRESS" expands to this command.
export KEYPRESS="xvkbd -xsendevent -secure -text"
Examples
With virtual keystrokes and CLI access to the clipboard, you're limited only by your imagination and scripting ability. Here are some examples of how I use them, both for the manipulation of text and for navigation. The words in bold-face are the voice commands I use to launch the written commands.
Capitalize this. Copies selected text to the clipboard, pipes it through sed and back into the clipboard, then types fixed text back into my document:
xdotool key Control+c && xclip -o \
| sed 's/\(.*\)/\L\1/' \
| sed -r 's/\<./\U&/g' \
| xclip -i && $KEYPRESS "$(xclip -o)"
Go to grades. This example takes advantage of Firefox "quick search." I start with a single quote to match the linked text "grades" and press the Return key (\r) to follow the link:
$KEYPRESS "'grades\r"
First Inbox. From any location within Thunderbird I can run this command and it executes the keystrokes to take me to the first inbox and put focus on the first message:
xdotool key Control+k && $KEYPRESS "\[Tab]\[Home]\[Left]\[Right]\[Down]" && sleep .2 && xdotool key Tab
single ex staff. Type out an entire Lilypond template into an empty text editor window:
xvkbd -xsendevent -secure -file "/path/to/single_ex_staff.ly"
Paragraph Tags. Puts HTML paragraph tags around selected text:
#!/bin/bash
KEYPRESS='xvkbd -xsendevent -secure -text'
xdotool key Control+c
$KEYPRESS '<p>'
xdotool key Control+v
$KEYPRESS '</p>'
Launching commands with keystrokes in Openbox
I normally use blather voice commands to launch the scripts and keystroke commands, but I have a handful of frequently-used commands that I launch using keystroke combos configured in the Openbox config file (~/.config/openbox/rc.xml on my system). This block configures the super+n key combo to launch my examplelink.sh script.
<keybind key="W-n"> <action name="Execute"> <startupnotify> <enabled>true</enabled> <name>special</name> </startupnotify> <command>examplelink.sh</command> </action> </keybind>
Links
- Amazing collection of one-line tricks for the
sedstream editor: https://sed.sourceforge.net/sed1line.txt - Blather source code: https://gitorious.org/blather
- Sphinx knowledge base tool: https://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/tools/lmtool-new.html
- snapshot of my blather commands file: https://paste.jonkulp.net/sicegamupi.tex
- Blather Installation Script for Debian: https://paste.jonkulp.net/lolilabuje