XLAX(1)

🎀 NAME 🎀

xlax — it's an X Window System program that takes your keyboard input and sends it to multiple windows at once 💖 (yes, like a group chat but for keystrokes, no cap).

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

xlax [-find] [-prefix string] [-toolkit options]

So -find makes it go hunt for windows on startup, -prefix string lets you tell it what string to hunt for instead of the default, and -toolkit options are the usual X toolkit ones that come along for the ride 🫶

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

Bestie, listen. Xlax is an X Window System program that will send keyboard input it receives to multiple selected windows. That's the whole vibe. 👑

When you run it, Xlax will bring up its main window. There will be six buttons on it: "Quit", "Add Windows", "Find xlax:", "Send String", "Paste", and "Kill Window."

"Quit" will terminate xlax. "Add windows" will change the cursor to a cross-hair and let you select any window on the screen by pressing a mouse button 😌 You can keep selecting windows until either the xlax window itself, or a window that's already been selected, gets selected. That's your lil "ok we're done here" signal.

When a window is selected, its name will appear in the xlax window. Clicking the mouse on the window name will toggle whether that window should receive input. And when you type anywhere in the xlax window, those keystrokes get sent to all the selected windows. Periodt. ⌨️✨

"Kill Window" will let you select a window and remove it from xlax's list. > heads up: the user must click on the actual window, not the name that appears in xlax 👀 like, the real one.

There's a window to the right of each name, which may display text assigned to this window name. When "Send String" is selected, the specific string associated with each window will be sent to those windows. Clicking the first mouse button in this area will bring up a popup window that lets you change the assigned text. Up to 150 characters are allowed. And here's the tea: the software records all characters including backspace and carriage return, so there is no editing this field — if you make a mistake, click on "Clear" to start over. 😭 (we've all been there)

The "Paste" button sends the currently (or most recently) selected text to all active windows. Slay.

The "Find xlax:" button searches all X11 windows for those with a class hint that begins with "xlax:" — or alternately, a string specified by the user with the -prefix option. Those windows are added automatically, and their sendstring is automatically set to whatever follows "xlax:" (or the alternate prefix value). Iconic behavior honestly. 🦋

This tool tends to be useful for system administration tasks that require almost the same thing to be done in several different windows, but require some human intervention (e.g. some tape backups or building multiple servers). The string area is useful for machine or platform specific strings (such as machine names or machine type). So like, it's giving "sysadmin multitasking main character energy" 💅

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🍓 EXAMPLES 🍓

This starts up three xterms, and then xlax automatically finds them:

example% xterm -xrm 'XTerm*allowSendEvents: true' -name xlax:string1 &
[1] 555
example% xterm -xrm 'XTerm*allowSendEvents: true' -name xlax:string2 &
[2] 556
example% xterm -xrm 'XTerm*allowSendEvents: true' -name xlax:string3 &
[3] 557
example% xlax -find

If you want more than one xlax, to automatically find different windows, specify a different prefix:

example% xterm -xrm 'XTerm*allowSendEvents: true' -name foo:string1 &
[1] 555
example% xterm -xrm 'XTerm*allowSendEvents: true' -name foo:string2 &
[2] 556
example% xterm -xrm 'XTerm*allowSendEvents: true' -name bar:string3 &
[3] 557
example% xterm -xrm 'XTerm*allowSendEvents: true' -name bar:string3 &
[4] 558
example% xlax -prefix foo: -find &
[5] 559
example% xlax -prefix bar: -find &
[6] 560

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🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

• DISPLAY — To get default host and display number. It's how xlax knows where to show up, iykyk ✨

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💀 CAVEATS 💀

For xlax to work on an xterm, "allowSendEvents" must be enabled on the xterm. And not to be dramatic but: note that this means that anyone can send keystrokes to that xterm, so this should not be run in an insecure or unmonitored environment. 🚨 Like please, fr fr, do not.

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🙈 BUGS 🙈

Probably something, but nothing that comes to mind. 😌✨ (iconic honestly, but also, bestie, be skeptical)

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

• xterm(1)

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💜 COPYRIGHT 💜

Copyright 1992, Frank Adelstein.

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And that's the whole page, bestie — this one's from X Version 11, Release 5. Go forth and send your keystrokes everywhere at once 🫶🎀