XkbGetIndicatorState(3)

💅 XkbGetIndicatorState(3) — aka the XKB FUNCTIONS girlies

okay so bestie, buckle up, we're diving into XkbGetIndicatorState from the XKB FUNCTIONS corner of the universe ✨ this is a libX11 situation and it's lowkey iconic.

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🌸 NAME 🌸

XkbGetIndicatorState — literally just goes and gets you the current state of the keyboard indicators 🎀 that's it, that's the whole job, and she does it well.

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

Status XkbGetIndicatorState (Display *display, unsigned int device_spec,
       unsigned int state_return);

copy that exactly, bestie, don't get creative with the types 🙈

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🦋 ARGUMENTS 🦋

• display — the connection to the X server, your little phone line to the mothership 📞
• device_spec — the device ID, or you can pass XkbUseCoreKbd if you're feeling basic 💅
• state_return — gets backfilled with a mask of the indicator state, so it comes back changed, like a glow-up but for a variable 🫶

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💜 DESCRIPTION 💜

okay so here's the tea: Xkb lets applications get info about indicators using two different methods, and they are not the same vibe at all.

Method one is giving core X implementation energy — you use a mask to specify the indicators. very old school, very "we've been doing it this way forever." 🔥

Method two is the interop-friendly one, and it uses indicator names instead. this is the one you pick when you actually care about applications talking to each other, iykyk 🌈

the correspondence between the indicator name and the bit position in masks is as follows: one of the parameters returned from XkbGetNamedIndicators is an index that is the bit position to use in any function call that requires a mask of indicator bits, as well as the indicator's index into the XkbIndicatorRec array of indicator maps. like, that index is your girl for basically everything mask-related 👑

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so what does XkbGetIndicatorState actually do? she queries the display for the state of the indicators on the device specified by device_spec. and for each indicator that is "turned on" on the device, the associated bit is set in state_return. every single one. very thorough, we love a detail-oriented queen 💖

now the plot twist 😭 — if a compatible version of the Xkb extension is not available in the server, XkbGetIndicatorState returns a BadMatch error. rude, honestly. but otherwise? it sends the request to the X server, places the state of the indicators into state_return, and returns Success. slay 💅

so like, the value reported by XkbGetIndicatorState is identical to the value reported by the core protocol. fr fr. no cap. same value, different font 🎀

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💀 DIAGNOSTICS 💀

• BadMatch — a compatible version of Xkb was not available in the server, or an argument has correct type and range, but is otherwise invalid. two very different crimes, same error card 🙈

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⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

• XkbGetNamedIndicators(3) — go read her too, she's the one handing out those indices 👑

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and that's the whole page bestie, you ate that 💅✨

this has been brought to you by X Version 11 and libX11 1.8.14 — go off, kings 👑🫶