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<!DOCTYPE html public "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>Basic Graphics Programming With The XCB Library</title>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<link href="xcb.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
</head>
<body>
<div class="title">
Basic Graphics Programming With The XCB Library
</div>
<div class="toc">
<ol>
<li><a class="section" href="#intro">Introduction</a>
<li><a class="section" href="#Xmodel">The client and server model of the X window system</a>
<li><a class="section" href="#asynch">GUI programming: the asynchronous model</a>
<li><a class="section" href="#notions">Basic XCB notions</a>
<ol>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#conn">The X Connection</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#requestsreplies">Requests and replies: the Xlib killers</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#gc">The Graphics Context</a>
<li>Object handles
<li>Memory allocation for XCB structures
<li><a class="subsection" href="#events">Events</a>
</ol>
<li><a class="section" href="#use">Using XCB-based programs</a>
<ol>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#inst">Installation of XCB</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#comp">Compiling XCB-based programs</a>
</ol>
<li><a class="section" href="#openconn">Opening and closing the connection to an X server</a>
<li><a class="section" href="#screen">Checking basic information about a connection</a>
<li><a class="section" href="#helloworld">Creating a basic window - the "hello world" program</a>
<li><a class="section" href="#drawing">Drawing in a window</a>
<ol>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#allocgc">Allocating a Graphics Context</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#changegc">Changing the attributes of a Graphics Context</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#drawingprim">Drawing primitives: point, line, box, circle,...</a>
</ol>
<li><a class="section" href="#xevents">X Events</a>
<ol>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#register">Registering for event types using event masks</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#loop">Receiving events: writing the events loop</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#expose">Expose events</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#userinput">Getting user input</a>
<ol>
<li><a class="subsubsection" href="#mousepressrelease">Mouse button press and release events</a>
<li><a class="subsubsection" href="#mousemvnt">Mouse movement events</a>
<li><a class="subsubsection" href="#mouseenter">Mouse pointer enter and leave events</a>
<li><a class="subsubsection" href="#focus">The keyboard focus</a>
<li><a class="subsubsection" href="#keypress">Keyboard press and release events</a>
</ol>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#eventex">X events: a complete example</a>
</ol>
<li><a class="section" href="#font">Handling text and fonts</a>
<ol>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#fontstruct">The Font structure</a>
<li>Loading a Font
<li>Assigning a Font to a Graphic Context
<li>Drawing text in a window
</ol>
<li>Windows hierarchy
<ol>
<li>Root, parent and child windows
<li>Events propagation
</ol>
<li><a class="section" href="#wm">Interacting with the window manager</a>
<ol>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#wmprop">Window properties</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#wmname">Setting the window name and icon name</a>
<li>Setting preferred window size(s)
<li>Setting miscellaneous window manager hints
<li>Setting an application's icon
<li>Obeying the delete-window protocol
</ol>
<li><a class="section" href="#winop">Simple window operations</a>
<ol>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#winmap">Mapping and unmapping a window</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#winconf">Configuring a window</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#winmove">Moving a window around the screen</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#winsize">Resizing a window</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#winstack">Changing windows stacking order: raise and lower</a>
<li>Iconifying and de-iconifying a window
<li><a class="subsection" href="#wingetinfo">Getting informations about a window</a>
</ol>
<li><a class="section" href="#usecolor">Using colors to paint the rainbow</a>
<ol>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#colormap">Color maps</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#colormapalloc">Allocating and freeing Color Maps</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#alloccolor">Allocating and freeing a color entry</a>
<li>Drawing with a color
</ol>
<li><a class="section" href="#pixmaps">X Bitmaps and Pixmaps</a>
<ol>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#pixmapswhat">What is a X Bitmap ? An X Pixmap ?</a>
<li>Loading a bitmap from a file
<li>Drawing a bitmap in a window
<li><a class="subsection" href="#pixmapscreate">Creating a pixmap</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#pixmapsdraw">Drawing a pixmap in a window</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#pixmapsfree">Freeing a pixmap</a>
</ol>
<li>Messing with the mouse cursor
<ol>
<li>Creating and destroying a mouse cursor
<li>Setting a window's mouse cursor
</ol>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#translation">Translation of basic Xlib functions and macros</a>
<ol>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#displaystructure">Members of the Display structure</a>
<ol>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#ConnectionNumber">ConnectionNumber</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#DefaultScreen">DefaultScreen</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#QLength">QLength</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#ScreenCount">ScreenCount</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#ServerVendor">ServerVendor</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#ProtocolVersion">ProtocolVersion</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#ProtocolRevision">ProtocolRevision</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#VendorRelease">VendorRelease</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#DisplayString">DisplayString</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#BitmapUnit">BitmapUnit</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#BitmapBitOrder">BitmapBitOrder</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#BitmapPad">BitmapPad</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#ImageByteOrder">ImageByteOrder</a>
</ol>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#screenofdisplay">ScreenOfDisplay related functions</a>
<ol>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#ScreenOfDisplay">ScreenOfDisplay</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#DefaultScreenOfDisplay">DefaultScreenOfDisplay</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#RootWindow">RootWindow / RootWindowOfScreen</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#DefaultRootWindow">DefaultRootWindow</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#DefaultVisual">DefaultVisual / DefaultVisualOfScreen</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#DefaultGC">DefaultGC / DefaultGCOfScreen</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#BlackPixel">BlackPixel / BlackPixelOfScreen</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#WhitePixel">WhitePixel / WhitePixelOfScreen</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#DisplayWidth">DisplayWidth / WidthOfScreen</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#DisplayHeight">DisplayHeight / HeightOfScreen</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#DisplayWidthMM">DisplayWidthMM / WidthMMOfScreen</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#DisplayHeightMM">DisplayHeightMM / HeightMMOfScreen</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#DisplayPlanes">DisplayPlanes / DefaultDepth / DefaultDepthOfScreen / PlanesOfScreen</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#DefaultColormap">DefaultColormap / DefaultColormapOfScreen</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#MinCmapsOfScreen">MinCmapsOfScreen</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#MaxCmapsOfScreen">MaxCmapsOfScreen</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#DoesSaveUnders">DoesSaveUnders</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#DoesBackingStore">DoesBackingStore</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#EventMaskOfScreen">EventMaskOfScreen</a>
</ol>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#misc">Miscellaneaous macros</a>
<ol>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#DisplayOfScreen">DisplayOfScreen</a>
<li><a class="subsection" href="#DisplayCells">DisplayCells / CellsOfScreen</a>
</ol>
</ol>
</ol>
</div>
<div class="section">
<ol>
<li class="title"><a name="intro">Introduction</a>
<p>
This tutorial is based on the
<a href="http://users.actcom.co.il/~choo/lupg/tutorials/xlib-programming/xlib-programming.html">Xlib Tutorial</a>
written by <a href="mailto:choor@atcom.co.il">Guy Keren</a>. The
author allowed me to take some parts of his text, mainly the text which
deals with the X Windows generality.
</p>
<p>
This tutorial is intended for people who want to start to program
with the <a href="http://xcb.freedesktop.org">XCB</a>
library. keep in mind that XCB, like the
<a href="http://tronche.com/gui/x/xlib/introduction">Xlib</a>
library, isn't what post programmers wanting to write X
applications are looking for. They should use a much higher
level GUI toolkit like Motif,
<a href="http://www.lesstif.org">LessTiff</a>,
<a href="http://www.gtk.org">GTK</a>,
<a href="http://www.trolltech.com">QT</a> or
<a href="http://www.enlightenment.org">EWL</a>, or use
<a href="http://cairographics.org">Cairo</a>.
However,
we need to start somewhere. More than this, knowing how things
work down below is never a bad idea.
</p>
<p>
After reading this tutorial, one should be able to write very
simple graphical programs, but not programs with decent user
interfaces. For such programs, one of the previously mentioned
libraries should be used.
</p>
<p>
But what is XCB? Xlib has been
the standard C binding for the <a href="http://www.x.org">X
Window System</a> protocol for many years now. It is an
excellent piece of work, but there are applications for which it
is not ideal, for example:
</p>
<ul>
<li><b>Small platforms</b>: Xlib is a large piece of code, and
it's difficult to make it smaller
<li><b>Latency hiding</b>: Xlib requests requiring a reply are
effectively synchronous: they block until the reply appears,
whether the result is needed immediately or not.
<li><b>Direct access to the protocol</b>: Xlib does quite a
bit of caching, layering, and similar optimizations. While this
is normally a feature, it makes it difficult to simply emit
specified X protocol requests and process specific
responses.
<li><b>Threaded applications</b>: While Xlib does attempt to
support multithreading, the API makes this difficult and
error-prone.
<li><b>New extensions</b>: The Xlib infrastructure provides
limited support for the new creation of X extension client side
code.
</ul>
<p>
For these reasons, among others, XCB, an X C binding, has been
designed to solve the above problems and thus provide a base for
</p>
<ul>
<li>Toolkit implementation.
<li>Direct protocol-level programming.
<li>Lightweight emulation of commonly used portions of the
Xlib API.
</ul>
<br>
<li class="title"><a name="Xmodel">The client and server model of the X window system</a>
<p>
The X Window System was developed with one major goal:
flexibility. The idea was that the way things look is one thing,
but the way things work is another matter. Thus, the lower
levels provide the tools required to draw windows, handle user
input, allow drawing graphics using colors (or black and white
screens), etc. To this point, a decision was made to separate
the system into two parts. A client that decides what to do, and
a server that actually draws on the screen and reads user input
in order to send it to the client for processing.
</p>
<p>
This model is the complete opposite of what is used to when
dealing with clients and servers. In our case, the user sits
near the machine controlled by the server, while the client
might be running on a remote machine. The server controls the
screens, mouse and keyboard. A client may connect to the server,
request that it draws a window (or several windows), and ask the
server to send it any input the user sends to these
windows. Thus, several clients may connect to a single X server
(one might be running mail software, one running a WWW
browser, etc). When input is sent by the user to some window,
the server sends a message to the client controlling this window
for processing. The client decides what to do with this input,
and sends the server requests for drawing in the window.
</p>
<p>
The whole session is carried out using the X message
protocol. This protocol was originally carried over the TCP/IP
protocol suite, allowing the client to run on any machine
connected to the same network that the server is. Later on, the
X servers were extended to allow clients running on the local
machine with more optimized access to the server (note that an X
protocol message may be several hundreds of KB in size), such as
using shared memory, or using Unix domain sockets (a method for
creating a logical channel on a Unix system between two processes).
</p>
<li class="title"><a name="asynch">GUI programming: the asynchronous model</a>
<p>
Unlike conventional computer programs, that carry some serial
nature, a GUI program usually uses an asynchronous programming
model, also known as "event-driven programming". This means that
that program mostly sits idle, waiting for events sent by the X
server, and then acts upon these events. An event may say "The
user pressed the 1st button mouse in spot (x,y)", or "The window
you control needs to be redrawn". In order for the program to be
responsive to the user input, as well as to refresh requests, it
needs to handle each event in a rather short period of time
(e.g. less that 200 milliseconds, as a rule of thumb).
</p>
<p>
This also implies that the program may not perform operations
that might take a long time while handling an event (such as
opening a network connection to some remote server, or
connecting to a database server, or even performing a long file
copy operation). Instead, it needs to perform all these
operations in an asynchronous manner. This may be done by using
various asynchronous models to perform the longish operations,
or by performing them in a different process or thread.
</p>
<p>
So the way a GUI program looks is something like that:
</p>
<ol>
<li>Perform initialization routines.
<li>Connect to the X server.
<li>Perform X-related initialization.
<li>While not finished:
<ol>
<li>Receive the next event from the X server.
<li>Handle the event, possibly sending various drawing
requests to the X server.
<li>If the event was a quit message, exit the loop.
</ol>
<li>Close down the connection to the X server.
<li>Perform cleanup operations.
</ol>
<br>
<li class="title"><a name="notions">Basic XCB notions</a>
<p>
XCB has been created to eliminate the need for
programs to actually implement the X protocol layer. This
library gives a program a very low-level access to any X
server. Since the protocol is standardized, a client using any
implementation of XCB may talk with any X server (the same
occurs for Xlib, of course). We now give a brief description of
the basic XCB notions. They will be detailed later.
</p>
<ol>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="conn">The X Connection</a>
<p>
The major notion of using XCB is the X Connection. This is a
structure representing the connection we have open with a
given X server. It hides a queue of messages coming from the
server, and a queue of pending requests that our client
intends to send to the server. In XCB, this structure is named
'XCBConnection'. It is analogous to the Xlib Display.
When we open a connection to an X server, the
library returns a pointer to such a structure. Later, we
supply this pointer to any XCB function that should send
messages to the X server or receive messages from this server.
</p>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="requestsreplies">Requests and
replies: the Xlib killers</a>
<p>
To ask for information from the X server, we have to make a request
and ask for a reply. With Xlib, these two tasks are
automatically done: Xlib locks the system, sends a request,
waits for a reply from the X server and unlocks. This is
annoying, especially if one makes a lot of requests to the X
server. Indeed, Xlib has to wait for the end of a reply
before asking for the next request (because of the locks that
Xlib sends). For example, here is a time-line of N=4
requests/replies with Xlib, with a round-trip latency
<b>T_round_trip</b> that is 5 times long as the time required
to write or read a request/reply (<b>T_write/T_read</b>):
</p>
<pre class="text">
W-----RW-----RW-----RW-----R
</pre>
<ul>
<li>W: Writing request
<li>-: Stalled, waiting for data
<li>R: Reading reply
</ul>
<p>
The total time is N * (T_write + T_round_trip + T_read).
</p>
<p>
With XCB, we can suppress most of the round-trips as the
requests and the replies are not locked. We usually send a
request, then XCB returns to us a <b>cookie</b>, which is an
identifier. Then, later, we ask for a reply using this
<b>cookie</b> and XCB returns a
pointer to that reply. Hence, with XCB, we can send a lot of
requests, and later in the program, ask for all the replies
when we need them. Here is the time-line for 4
requests/replies when we use this property of XCB:
</p>
<pre class="text">
WWWW--RRRR
</pre>
<p>
The total time is N * T_write + max (0, T_round_trip - (N-1) *
T_write) + N * T_read. Which can be considerably faster than
all those Xlib round-trips.
</p>
<p>
Here is a program that computes the time to create 500 atoms
with Xlib and XCB. It shows the Xlib way, the bad XCB way
(which is similar to Xlib) and the good XCB way. On my
computer, XCB is 25 times faster than Xlib.
</p>
<pre class="code">
#include &lt;stdlib.h&gt;
#include &lt;stdio.h&gt;
#include &lt;string.h&gt;
#include &lt;sys/time.h&gt;
#include &lt;X11/XCB/xcb.h&gt;
#include &lt;X11/Xlib.h&gt;
double
get_time(void)
{
struct timeval timev;
gettimeofday(&amp;timev, NULL);
return (double)timev.tv_sec + (((double)timev.tv_usec) / 1000000);
}
int
main ()
{
XCBConnection *c;
XCBATOM *atoms;
XCBInternAtomCookie *cs;
char **names;
int count;
int i;
double start;
double end;
double diff;
/* Xlib */
Display *disp;
Atom *atoms_x;
double diff_x;
c = XCBConnect (NULL, NULL);
count = 500;
atoms = (XCBATOM *)malloc (count * sizeof (atoms));
names = (char **)malloc (count * sizeof (char *));
/* init names */
for (i = 0; i &lt; count; ++i)
{
char buf[100];
sprintf (buf, "NAME%d", i);
names[i] = strdup (buf);
}
/* bad use */
start = get_time ();
for (i = 0; i &lt; count; ++i)
atoms[i] = XCBInternAtomReply (c,
XCBInternAtom (c,
0,
strlen(names[i]),
names[i]),
NULL)->atom;
end = get_time ();
diff = end - start;
printf ("bad use time : %f\n", diff);
/* good use */
start = get_time ();
cs = (XCBInternAtomCookie *) malloc (count * sizeof(XCBInternAtomCookie));
for(i = 0; i &lt; count; ++i)
cs[i] = XCBInternAtom (c, 0, strlen(names[i]), names[i]);
for(i = 0; i &lt; count; ++i)
{
XCBInternAtomRep *r;
r = XCBInternAtomReply(c, cs[i], 0);
if(r)
atoms[i] = r->atom;
free(r);
}
end = get_time ();
printf ("good use time : %f\n", end - start);
printf ("ratio : %f\n", diff / (end - start));
diff = end - start;
/* free var */
for (i = 0; i &lt; count; ++i)
{
free (names[i]);
}
free (atoms);
free (cs);
XCBDisconnect (c);
/* Xlib */
disp = XOpenDisplay (getenv("DISPLAY"));
atoms_x = (Atom *)malloc (count * sizeof (atoms_x));
start = get_time ();
for (i = 0; i &lt; count; ++i)
atoms_x[i] = XInternAtom(disp, names[i], 0);
end = get_time ();
diff_x = end - start;
printf ("Xlib use time : %f\n", diff_x);
printf ("ratio : %f\n", diff_x / diff);
free (atoms_x);
free (names);
XCloseDisplay (disp);
return 1;
}
</pre>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="gc">The Graphic Context</a>
<p>
When we perform various drawing operations (graphics, text,
etc), we may specify various options for controlling how the
data will be drawn (what foreground and background colors to
use, how line edges will be connected, what font to use when
drawing some text, etc). In order to avoid the need to supply
hundreds of parameters to each drawing function, a graphical
context structure is used. We set the various drawing options
in this structure, and then we pass a pointer to this
structure to any drawing routines. This is rather handy, as we
often need to perform several drawing requests with the same
options. Thus, we would initialize a graphical context, set
the desired options, and pass this structure to all drawing
functions.
</p>
<p>
Note that graphic contexts have no client-side structure in
XCB, they're just XIDs. Xlib has a client-side structure
because it caches the GC contents so it can avoid making
redundant requests, but of course XCB doesn't do that.
</p>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="events">Events</a>
<p>
A structure is used to pass events received from the X
server. XCB supports exactly the events specified in the
protocol (33 events). This structure contains the type
of event received (including a bit for whether it came
from the server or another client), as well as the data associated with the
event (e.g. position on the screen where the event was
generated, mouse button associated with the event, region of
the screen associated with a "redraw" event, etc). The way to
read the event's data depends on the event type.
</p>
</ol>
<br>
<li class="title"><a name="use">Using XCB-based programs</a>
<br>
<ol>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="inst">Installation of XCB</a>
<p>
<b>TODO:</b> These instructions are out of date.
Just reference the <a href="http://xcb.freedesktop.org/">main XCB page</a>
so we don't have to maintain these instructions in more than
one place.
</p>
<p>
To build XCB from source, you need to have installed at
least:
</p>
<ul>
<li>pkgconfig 0.15.0
<li>automake 1.7
<li>autoconf 2.50
<li><a href="http://www.check.org">check</a>
<li><a href="http://xmlsoft.org/XSLT/">xsltproc</a>
</ul>
<p>
You have to checkout in CVS the following modules:
</p>
<ul>
<li>Xproto from xlibs
<li>Xau from xlibs
<li>xcb-proto
<li>xcb
</ul>
<p>
Note that Xproto and xcb-proto exist only to install header
files, so typing 'make' or 'make all' will produce the message
"Nothing to be done for 'all'". That's normal.
</p>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="comp">Compiling XCB-based programs</a>
<p>
Compiling XCB-based programs requires linking them with the XCB
library. This is easily done thanks to pkgconfig:
</p>
<pre class="text">
gcc -Wall prog.c -o prog `pkg-config --cflags --libs xcb`
</pre>
</ol>
<li class="title"><a name="openconn">Opening and closing the connection to an X server</a>
<p>
An X program first needs to open the connection to the X
server. There is a function that opens a connection. It requires
the display name, or NULL. In the latter case, the display name
will be the one in the environment variable DISPLAY.
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBConnection *XCBConnect (const char *displayname,
int *screenp);
</pre>
<p>
The second parameter returns the screen number used for the
connection. The returned structure describes an XCB connection
and is opaque. Here is how the connection can be opened:
</p>
<pre class="code">
#include &lt;X11/XCB/xcb.h&gt;
int
main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
XCBConnection *c;
/* Open the connection to the X server. Use the DISPLAY environment variable as the default display name */
c = XCBConnect (NULL, NULL);
return 1;
}
</pre>
<p>
To close a connection, it suffices to use:
</p>
<pre class="code">
void XCBDisconnect (XCBConnection *c);
</pre>
<div class="comp">
<div class="title">
Comparison Xlib/XCB
</div>
<div class="xlib">
<ul>
<li>XOpenDisplay ()
</ul>
</div>
<div class="xcb">
<ul>
<li>XCBConnect ()
</ul>
</div>
<div class="xlib">
<ul>
<li>XCloseDisplay ()
</ul>
</div>
<div class="xcb">
<ul>
<li>XCBDisconnect ()
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<p>
</p>
<li class="title"><a name="screen">Checking basic information about a connection</a>
<p>
Once we have opened a connection to an X server, we should check some
basic information about it: what screens it has, what is the
size (width and height) of the screen, how many colors it
supports (black and white ? grey scale ?, 256 colors ? more ?),
and so on. We get such information from the XCBSCREEN
structure:
</p>
<pre class="code">
typedef struct {
XCBWINDOW root;
XCBCOLORMAP default_colormap;
CARD32 white_pixel;
CARD32 black_pixel;
CARD32 current_input_masks;
CARD16 width_in_pixels;
CARD16 height_in_pixels;
CARD16 width_in_millimeters;
CARD16 height_in_millimeters;
CARD16 min_installed_maps;
CARD16 max_installed_maps;
XCBVISUALID root_visual;
BYTE backing_stores;
BOOL save_unders;
CARD8 root_depth;
CARD8 allowed_depths_len;
} XCBSCREEN;
</pre>
<p>
We could retrieve the first screen of the connection by using the
following function:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBSCREENIter XCBSetupRootsIter (XCBSetup *R);
</pre>
<p>
Here is a small program that shows how to use this function:
</p>
<pre class="code">
#include &lt;stdio.h&gt;
#include &lt;X11/XCB/xcb.h&gt;
int
main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
XCBConnection *c;
XCBSCREEN *screen;
int screen_nbr;
XCBSCREENIter iter;
/* Open the connection to the X server. Use the DISPLAY environment variable */
c = XCBConnect (NULL, &amp;screen_nbr);
/* Get the screen #screen_nbr */
iter = XCBSetupRootsIter (XCBGetSetup (c));
for (; iter.rem; --screen_nbr, XCBSCREENNext (&amp;iter))
if (screen_nbr == 0)
{
screen = iter.data;
break;
}
printf ("\n");
printf ("Informations of screen %ld:\n", screen-&gt;root.xid);
printf (" width.........: %d\n", screen-&gt;width_in_pixels);
printf (" height........: %d\n", screen-&gt;height_in_pixels);
printf (" white pixel...: %ld\n", screen-&gt;white_pixel);
printf (" black pixel...: %ld\n", screen-&gt;black_pixel);
printf ("\n");
return 1;
}
</pre>
<li class="title"><a name="helloworld">Creating a basic window - the "hello world" program</a>
<p>
After we got some basic information about our screen, we can
create our first window. In the X Window System, a window is
characterized by an Id. So, in XCB, a window is of type:
</p>
<pre class="code">
typedef struct {
CARD32 xid;
} XCBWINDOW;
</pre>
<p>
We first ask for a new Id for our window, with this function:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBWINDOW XCBWINDOWNew(XCBConnection *c);
</pre>
<p>
Then, XCB supplies the following function to create new windows:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBVoidCookie XCBCreateWindow (XCBConnection *c, /* Pointer to the XCBConnection structure */
CARD8 depth, /* Depth of the screen */
XCBWINDOW wid, /* Id of the window */
XCBWINDOW parent, /* Id of an existing window that should be the parent of the new window */
INT16 x, /* X position of the top-left corner of the window (in pixels) */
INT16 y, /* Y position of the top-left corner of the window (in pixels) */
CARD16 width, /* Width of the window (in pixels) */
CARD16 height, /* Height of the window (in pixels) */
CARD16 border_width, /* Width of the window's border (in pixels) */
CARD16 _class,
XCBVISUALID visual,
CARD32 value_mask,
const CARD32 *value_list);
</pre>
<p>
The fact that we created the window does not mean that it will
be drawn on screen. By default, newly created windows are not
mapped on the screen (they are invisible). In order to make our
window visible, we use the function <span class="code">XCBMapWindow()</span>, whose
prototype is
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBVoidCookie XCBMapWindow (XCBConnection *c, XCBWINDOW window);
</pre>
<p>
Finally, here is a small program to create a window of size
150x150 pixels, positioned at the top-left corner of the screen:
</p>
<pre class="code">
#include &lt;unistd.h&gt; /* pause() */
#include &lt;X11/XCB/xcb.h&gt;
int
main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
XCBConnection *c;
XCBSCREEN *screen;
XCBDRAWABLE win;
/* Open the connection to the X server */
c = XCBConnect (NULL, NULL);
/* Get the first screen */
screen = XCBSetupRootsIter (XCBGetSetup (c)).data;
/* Ask for our window's Id */
win.window = XCBWINDOWNew(c);
/* Create the window */
XCBCreateWindow (c, /* Connection */
XCBCopyFromParent, /* depth (same as root)*/
win.window, /* window Id */
screen-&gt;root, /* parent window */
0, 0, /* x, y */
150, 150, /* width, height */
10, /* border_width */
XCBWindowClassInputOutput,/* class */
screen-&gt;root_visual, /* visual */
0, NULL); /* masks, not used yet */
/* Map the window on the screen */
XCBMapWindow (c, win.window);
/* Make sure commands are sent before we pause, so window is shown */
XCBFlush (c);
pause (); /* hold client until Ctrl-C */
return 1;
}
</pre>
<p>
In this code, you see one more function - <span class="code">XCBFlush()</span>, not explained
yet. It is used to flush all the pending requests. More
precisely, there are 2 functions that do such things. The first
one is <span class="code">XCBFlush()</span>:
</p>
<pre class="code">
int XCBFlush (XCBConnection *c);
</pre>
<p>
This function flushes all pending requests to the X server (much
like the <span class="code">fflush()</span> function is used to
flush standard output). The second function is
<span class="code">XCBSync()</span>:
</p>
<pre class="code">
int XCBSync(XCBConnection *c, XCBGenericError **e);
</pre>
<p>
This functions also flushes all pending requests to the X
server, and then waits until the X server finishing processing
these requests. In a normal program, this will not be necessary
(we'll see why when we get to write a normal X program), but for
now, we put it there.
</p>
<p>
The window that is created by the above code has a default
background (gray). This one can be set to a specific color,
thanks to the two last parameters of
<span class="code">XCBCreateWindow()</span>, which are not
described yet. See the subsections
<a href="#winconf">Configuring a window</a> or
<a href="#winconf">Registering for event types using event masks</a>
for examples on how to use these parameters. In addition, as no
events are handled, you have to make a Ctrl-C to interrupt the
program.
</p>
<p>
<b>TODO</b>: one should tell what these functions return and
about the generic error
</p>
<div class="comp">
<div class="title">
Comparison Xlib/XCB
</div>
<div class="xlib">
<ul>
<li>XCreateWindow ()
</ul>
</div>
<div class="xcb">
<ul>
<li>XCBWINDOWNew ()
<li>XCBCreateWindow ()
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<br>
<li class="title"><a name="drawing">Drawing in a window</a>
<p>
Drawing in a window can be done using various graphical
functions (drawing pixels, lines, rectangles, etc). In order to
draw in a window, we first need to define various general
drawing parameters (what line width to use, which color to draw
with, etc). This is done using a graphical context.
</p>
<ol>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="allocgc">Allocating a Graphics Context</a>
<p>
As we said, a graphical context defines several attributes to
be used with the various drawing functions. For this, we
define a graphical context. We can use more than one graphical
context with a single window, in order to draw in multiple
styles (different colors, different line widths, etc). In XCB,
a Graphics Context is, as a window, characterized by an Id:
</p>
<pre class="code">
typedef struct {
CARD32 xid;
} XCBGCONTEXT;
</pre>
<p>
We first ask the X server to attribute an Id to our graphic
context with this function:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBGCONTEXT XCBGCONTEXTNew (XCBConnection *c);
</pre>
<p>
Then, we set the attributes of the graphic context with this function:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBVoidCookie XCBCreateGC (XCBConnection *c,
XCBGCONTEXT cid,
XCBDRAWABLE drawable,
CARD32 value_mask,
const CARD32 *value_list);
</pre>
<p>
We give now an example on how to allocate a graphic context
that specifies that each drawing function that uses it will
draw in foreground with a black color.
</p>
<pre class="code">
#include &lt;X11/XCB/xcb.h&gt;
int
main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
XCBConnection *c;
XCBSCREEN *screen;
XCBDRAWABLE win;
XCBGCONTEXT black;
CARD32 mask;
CARD32 value[1];
/* Open the connection to the X server and get the first screen */
c = XCBConnect (NULL, NULL);
screen = XCBSetupRootsIter (XCBGetSetup (c)).data;
/* Create a black graphic context for drawing in the foreground */
win.window = screen-&gt;root;
black = XCBGCONTEXTNew (c);
mask = XCBGCForeground;
value[0] = screen-&gt;black_pixel;
XCBCreateGC (c, black, win, mask, value);
return 1;
}
</pre>
<p>
Note should be taken regarding the role of "value_mask" and
"value_list" in the prototype of <span class="code">XCBCreateGC()</span>. Since a
graphic context has many attributes, and since we often just
want to define a few of them, we need to be able to tell the
<span class="code">XCBCreateGC()</span> which attributes we
want to set. This is what the "value_mask" parameter is
for. We then use the "value_list" parameter to specify actual
values for the attribute we defined in "value_mask". Thus, for
each constant used in "value_list", we will use the matching
constant in "value_mask". In this case, we define a graphic
context with one attribute: when drawing (a point, a line,
etc), the foreground color will be black. The rest of the
attributes of this graphic context will be set to their
default values.
</p>
<p>
See the next Subsection for more details.
</p>
<div class="comp">
<div class="title">
Comparison Xlib/XCB
</div>
<div class="xlib">
<ul>
<li>XCreateGC ()
</ul>
</div>
<div class="xcb">
<ul>
<li>XCBGCONTEXTNew ()
<li>XCBCreateGC ()
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<br>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="changegc">Changing the attributes of a Graphics Context</a>
<p>
Once we have allocated a Graphic Context, we may need to
change its attributes (for example, changing the foreground
color we use to draw a line, or changing the attributes of the
font we use to display strings. See Subsections Drawing with a
color and Assigning a Font to a Graphic Context). This is done
by using this function:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBVoidCookie XCBChangeGC (XCBConnection *c, /* The XCB Connection */
XCBGCONTEXT gc, /* The Graphic Context */
CARD32 value_mask, /* Components of the Graphic Context that have to be set */
const CARD32 *value_list); /* Value as specified by value_mask */
</pre>
<p>
The <span class="code">value_mask</span> parameter could take
any combination of these masks from the XCBGC enumeration:
</p>
<ul>
<li>XCBGCFunction
<li>XCBGCPlaneMask
<li>XCBGCForeground
<li>XCBGCBackground
<li>XCBGCLineWidth
<li>XCBGCLineStyle
<li>XCBGCCapStyle
<li>XCBGCJoinStyle
<li>XCBGCFillStyle
<li>XCBGCFillRule
<li>XCBGCTile
<li>XCBGCStipple
<li>XCBGCTileStippleOriginX
<li>XCBGCTileStippleOriginY
<li>XCBGCFont
<li>XCBGCSubwindowMode
<li>XCBGCGraphicsExposures
<li>XCBGCClipOriginX
<li>XCBGCClipOriginY
<li>XCBGCClipMask
<li>XCBGCDashOffset
<li>XCBGCDashList
<li>XCBGCArcMode
</ul>
<p>
It is possible to set several attributes at the same
time (for example setting the attributes of a font and the
color which will be used to display a string), by OR'ing these
values in <span class="code">value_mask</span>. Then
<span class="code">value_list</span> has to be an array which
lists the value for the respective attributes. <b>These values
must be in the same order as masks listed above.</b> See Subsection
Drawing with a color to have an example.
</p>
<p>
<b>TODO</b>: set the links of the 3 subsections, once they will
be written :)
</p>
<p>
<b>TODO</b>: give an example which sets several attributes.
</p>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="drawingprim">Drawing primitives: point, line, box, circle,...</a>
<p>
After we have created a Graphic Context, we can draw on a
window using this Graphic Context, with a set of XCB
functions, collectively called "drawing primitives". Let see
how they are used.
</p>
<p>
To draw a point, or several points, we use
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBVoidCookie XCBPolyPoint (XCBConnection *c, /* The connection to the X server */
BYTE coordinate_mode, /* Coordinate mode, usually set to XCBCoordModeOrigin */
XCBDRAWABLE drawable, /* The drawable on which we want to draw the point(s) */
XCBGCONTEXT gc, /* The Graphic Context we use to draw the point(s) */
CARD32 points_len, /* The number of points */
const XCBPOINT *points); /* An array of points */
</pre>
<p>
The <span class="code">coordinate_mode</span> parameter
specifies the coordinate mode. Available values are
</p>
<ul>
<li><span class="code">XCBCoordModeOrigin</span>
<li><span class="code">XCBCoordModePrevious</span>
</ul>
<p>
If XCBCoordModePrevious is used, then all points but the first one
are relative to the immediately previous point.
</p>
<p>
The <span class="code">XCBPOINT</span> type is just a
structure with two fields (the coordinates of the point):
</p>
<pre class="code">
typedef struct {
INT16 x;
INT16 y;
} XCBPOINT;
</pre>
<p>
You could see an example in xpoints.c. <b>TODO</b> Set the link.
</p>
<p>
To draw a line, or a polygonal line, we use
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBVoidCookie XCBPolyLine (XCBConnection *c, /* The connection to the X server */
BYTE coordinate_mode, /* Coordinate mode, usually set to XCBCoordModeOrigin */
XCBDRAWABLE drawable, /* The drawable on which we want to draw the line(s) */
XCBGCONTEXT gc, /* The Graphic Context we use to draw the line(s) */
CARD32 points_len, /* The number of points in the polygonal line */
const XCBPOINT *points); /* An array of points */
</pre>
<p>
This function will draw the line between the first and the
second points, then the line between the second and the third
points, and so on.
</p>
<p>
To draw a segment, or several segments, we use
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBVoidCookie XCBPolySegment (XCBConnection *c, /* The connection to the X server */
XCBDRAWABLE drawable, /* The drawable on which we want to draw the segment(s) */
XCBGCONTEXT gc, /* The Graphic Context we use to draw the segment(s) */
CARD32 segments_len, /* The number of segments */
const XCBSEGMENT *segments); /* An array of segments */
</pre>
<p>
The <span class="code">XCBSEGMENT</span> type is just a
structure with four fields (the coordinates of the two points
that define the segment):
</p>
<pre class="code">
typedef struct {
INT16 x1;
INT16 y1;
INT16 x2;
INT16 y2;
} XCBSEGMENT;
</pre>
<p>
To draw a rectangle, or several rectangles, we use
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBVoidCookie XCBPolyRectangle (XCBConnection *c, /* The connection to the X server */
XCBDRAWABLE drawable, /* The drawable on which we want to draw the rectangle(s) */
XCBGCONTEXT gc, /* The Graphic Context we use to draw the rectangle(s) */
CARD32 rectangles_len, /* The number of rectangles */
const XCBRECTANGLE *rectangles); /* An array of rectangles */
</pre>
<p>
The <span class="code">XCBRECTANGLE</span> type is just a
structure with four fields (the coordinates of the top-left
corner of the rectangle, and its width and height):
</p>
<pre class="code">
typedef struct {
INT16 x;
INT16 y;
CARD16 width;
CARD16 height;
} XCBRECTANGLE;
</pre>
<!-- There's no coordinate_mode. Is it normal? -->
<!-- [iano] Yes, it's not in the protocol. -->
<p>
To draw an elliptical arc, or several elliptical arcs, we use
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBVoidCookie XCBPolyArc (XCBConnection *c, /* The connection to the X server */
XCBDRAWABLE drawable, /* The drawable on which we want to draw the arc(s) */
XCBGCONTEXT gc, /* The Graphic Context we use to draw the arc(s) */
CARD32 arcs_len, /* The number of arcs */
const XCBARC *arcs); /* An array of arcs */
</pre>
<p>
The <span class="code">XCBARC</span> type is a structure with
six fields:
</p>
<pre class="code">
typedef struct {
INT16 x; /* Top left x coordinate of the rectangle surrounding the ellipse */
INT16 y; /* Top left y coordinate of the rectangle surrounding the ellipse */
CARD16 width; /* Width of the rectangle surrounding the ellipse */
CARD16 height; /* Height of the rectangle surrounding the ellipse */
INT16 angle1; /* Angle at which the arc begins */
INT16 angle2; /* Angle at which the arc ends */
} XCBARC;
</pre>
<div class="emph">
<p>
Note: the angles are expressed in units of 1/64 of a degree,
so to have an angle of 90 degrees, starting at 0,
<span class="code">angle1 = 0</span> and
<span class="code">angle2 = 90 &lt;&lt; 6</span>. Positive angles
indicate counterclockwise motion, while negative angles
indicate clockwise motion.
</p>
</div>
<!-- I think that (x,y) should be the center of the
ellipse, and (width, height) the radius. It's more logical. -->
<!-- iano: Yes, and I bet some toolkits do that.
But the protocol (and many other graphics APIs) define arcs
by bounding rectangles. -->
<p>
The corresponding function which fill inside the geometrical
object are listed below, without further explanation, as they
are used as the above functions.
</p>
<p>
To Fill a polygon defined by the points given as arguments ,
we use
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBVoidCookie XCBFillPoly (XCBConnection *c,
XCBDRAWABLE drawable,
XCBGCONTEXT gc,
CARD8 shape,
CARD8 coordinate_mode,
CARD32 points_len,
const XCBPOINT *points);
</pre>
<p>
The <span class="code">shape</span> parameter specifies a
shape that helps the server to improve performance. Available
values are
</p>
<ul>
<li><span class="code">XCBPolyShapeComplex</span>
<li><span class="code">XCBPolyShapeNonconvex</span>
<li><span class="code">XCBPolyShapeConvex</span>
</ul>
<p>
To fill one or several rectangles, we use
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBVoidCookie XCBPolyFillRectangle (XCBConnection *c,
XCBDRAWABLE drawable,
XCBGCONTEXT gc,
CARD32 rectangles_len,
const XCBRECTANGLE *rectangles);
</pre>
<p>
To fill one or several arcs, we use
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBVoidCookie XCBPolyFillArc (XCBConnection *c,
XCBDRAWABLE drawable,
XCBGCONTEXT gc,
CARD32 arcs_len,
const XCBARC *arcs);
</pre>
<br>
<a name="points.c"></a>
<p>
To illustrate these functions, here is an example that draws
four points, a polygonal line, two segments, two rectangles
and two arcs. Remark that we use events for the first time, as
an introduction to the next section.
</p>
<p>
<b>TODO:</b> Use screen-&gt;root_depth for depth parameter.
</p>
<p>
<b>TODO:</b> Remove get_depth(). It isn't used!
</p>
<pre class="code">
#include &lt;stdlib.h&gt;
#include &lt;stdio.h&gt;
#include &lt;X11/XCB/xcb.h&gt;
/* Get the depth of the screen. Needed in order to draw something */
int
get_depth(XCBConnection *c,
XCBSCREEN *root)
{
XCBDRAWABLE drawable;
XCBGetGeometryRep *geom;
int depth;
drawable.window = root-&gt;root;
geom = XCBGetGeometryReply (c, XCBGetGeometry(c, drawable), 0);
if(!geom)
{
perror ("GetGeometry(root) failed");
exit (0);
}
depth = geom-&gt;depth;
free (geom);
return depth;
}
int
main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
XCBConnection *c;
XCBSCREEN *screen;
XCBDRAWABLE win;
XCBGCONTEXT foreground;
XCBGenericEvent *e;
CARD32 mask = 0;
CARD32 values[2];
/* geometric objects */
XCBPOINT points[] = {
{10, 10},
{10, 20},
{20, 10},
{20, 20}};
XCBPOINT polyline[] = {
{50, 10},
{ 5, 20}, /* rest of points are relative */
{25,-20},
{10, 10}};
XCBSEGMENT segments[] = {
{100, 10, 140, 30},
{110, 25, 130, 60}};
XCBRECTANGLE rectangles[] = {
{ 10, 50, 40, 20},
{ 80, 50, 10, 40}};
XCBARC arcs[] = {
{10, 100, 60, 40, 0, 90 &lt;&lt; 6},
{90, 100, 55, 40, 0, 270 &lt;&lt; 6}};
/* Open the connection to the X server */
c = XCBConnect (NULL, NULL);
/* Get the first screen */
screen = XCBSetupRootsIter (XCBGetSetup (c)).data;
/* Create black (foreground) graphic context */
win.window = screen-&gt;root;
foreground = XCBGCONTEXTNew (c);
mask = XCBGCForeground | XCBGCGraphicsExposures;
values[0] = screen-&gt;black_pixel;
values[1] = 0;
XCBCreateGC (c, foreground, win, mask, values);
/* Ask for our window's Id */
win.window = XCBWINDOWNew(c);
/* Create the window */
mask = XCBCWBackPixel | XCBCWEventMask;
values[0] = screen-&gt;white_pixel;
values[1] = XCBEventMaskExposure;
XCBCreateWindow (c, /* Connection */
XCBCopyFromParent, /* depth */
win.window, /* window Id */
screen-&gt;root, /* parent window */
0, 0, /* x, y */
150, 150, /* width, height */
10, /* border_width */
XCBWindowClassInputOutput,/* class */
screen-&gt;root_visual, /* visual */
mask, values); /* masks */
/* Map the window on the screen */
XCBMapWindow (c, win.window);
/* We flush the request */
XCBFlush (c);
while ((e = XCBWaitForEvent (c)))
{
switch (e-&gt;response_type &amp; ~0x80)
{
case XCBExpose:
{
/* We draw the points */
XCBPolyPoint (c, XCBCoordModeOrigin, win, foreground, 4, points);
/* We draw the polygonal line */
XCBPolyLine (c, XCBCoordModePrevious, win, foreground, 4, polyline);
/* We draw the segements */
XCBPolySegment (c, win, foreground, 2, segments);
/* We draw the rectangles */
XCBPolyRectangle (c, win, foreground, 2, rectangles);
/* We draw the arcs */
XCBPolyArc (c, win, foreground, 2, arcs);
/* We flush the request */
XCBFlush (c);
break;
}
default:
{
/* Unknown event type, ignore it */
break;
}
}
/* Free the Generic Event */
free (e);
}
return 1;
}
</pre>
</ol>
<li class="title"><a name="xevents">X Events</a>
<p>
In an X program, everything is driven by events. Event painting
on the screen is sometimes done as a response to an event (an
<span class="code">Expose</span> event). If part of a program's
window that was hidden, gets exposed (e.g. the window was raised
above other widows), the X server will send an "expose" event to
let the program know it should repaint that part of the
window. User input (key presses, mouse movement, etc) is also
received as a set of events.
</p>
<ol>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="register">Registering for event types using event masks</a>
<p>
During the creation of a window, you should give it what kind
of events it wishes to receive. Thus, you may register for
various mouse (also called pointer) events, keyboard events,
expose events, and so on. This is done for optimizing the
server-to-client connection (i.e. why send a program (that
might even be running at the other side of the globe) an event
it is not interested in ?)
</p>
<p>
In XCB, you use the "value_mask" and "value_list" data in the
<span class="code">XCBCreateWindow()</span> function to
register for events. Here is how we register for
<span class="code">Expose</span> event when creating a window:
</p>
<pre class="code">
mask = XCBCWEventMask;
valwin[0] = XCBEventMaskExposure;
win.window = XCBWINDOWNew (c);
XCBCreateWindow (c, depth, win.window, root-&gt;root,
0, 0, 150, 150, 10,
XCBWindowClassInputOutput, root-&gt;root_visual,
mask, valwin);
</pre>
<p>
<span class="code">XCBEventMaskExposure</span> is a constant defined
in the XCBEventMask enumeration in the "xproto.h" header file. If we wanted to register for several
event types, we can logically "or" them, as follows:
</p>
<pre class="code">
mask = XCBCWEventMask;
valwin[0] = XCBEventMaskExposure | XCBEventMaskButtonPress;
win.window = XCBWINDOWNew (c);
XCBCreateWindow (c, depth, win.window, root-&gt;root,
0, 0, 150, 150, 10,
XCBWindowClassInputOutput, root-&gt;root_visual,
mask, valwin);
</pre>
<p>
This registers for <span class="code">Expose</span> events as
well as for mouse button presses inside the created
window. You should note that a mask may represent several
event sub-types.
</p>
<p>
The values that a mask could take are given
by the <span class="code">XCBCW</span> enumeration:
</p>
<pre class="code">
typedef enum {
XCBCWBackPixmap = 1L<<0,
XCBCWBackPixel = 1L<<1,
XCBCWBorderPixmap = 1L<<2,
XCBCWBorderPixel = 1L<<3,
XCBCWBitGravity = 1L<<4,
XCBCWWinGravity = 1L<<5,
XCBCWBackingStore = 1L<<6,
XCBCWBackingPlanes = 1L<<7,
XCBCWBackingPixel = 1L<<8,
XCBCWOverrideRedirect = 1L<<9,
XCBCWSaveUnder = 1L<<10,
XCBCWEventMask = 1L<<11,
XCBCWDontPropagate = 1L<<12,
XCBCWColormap = 1L<<13,
XCBCWCursor = 1L<<14
} XCBCW;
</pre>
<div class="emph">
<p>Note: we must be careful when setting the values of the valwin
parameter, as they have to follow the order the
<span class="code">XCBCW</span> enumeration. Here is an
example:
</p>
</div>
<pre class="code">
mask = XCBCWEventMask | XCBCWBackPixmap;
valwin[0] = XCBNone; /* for XCBCWBackPixmap (whose value is 1) */
valwin[1] = XCBEventMaskExposure | XCBEventMaskButtonPress; /* for XCBCWEventMask, whose value (2048) */
/* is greater than the one of XCBCWBackPixmap */
</pre>
<p>
If the window has already been created, we can use the
<span class="code">XCBConfigureWindow()</span> function to set
the events that the window will receive. The subsection
<a href="#winconf">Configuring a window</a> shows its
prototype. As an example, here is a piece of code that
configures the window to receive the
<span class="code">Expose</span> and
<span class="code">ButtonPress</span> events:
</p>
<pre class="code">
const static CARD32 values[] = { XCBEventMaskExposure | XCBEventMaskButtonPress };
/* The connection c and the window win are supposed to be defined */
XCBConfigureWindow (c, win, XCBCWEventMask, values);
</pre>
<div class="emph">
<p>
Note: A common bug programmers do is adding code to handle new
event types in their program, while forgetting to add the
masks for these events in the creation of the window. Such a
programmer then should sit down for hours debugging his
program, wondering "Why doesn't my program notice that I
released the button?", only to find that they registered for
button press events but not for button release events.
</p>
</div>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="loop">Receiving events: writing the events loop</a>
<p>
After we have registered for the event types we are interested
in, we need to enter a loop of receiving events and handling
them. There are two ways to receive events: a blocking way and
a non-blocking way:
</p>
<ul>
<li>
<span class="code">XCBWaitForEvent (XCBConnection *c)</span>
is the blocking way. It waits (so blocks...) until an event is
queued in the X server. Then it retrieves it into a newly
allocated structure (it dequeues it from the queue) and returns
it. This structure has to be freed. The function returns
<span class="code">NULL</span> if an error occurs.
<br>
<li>
<span class="code">XCBPollForEvent (XCBConnection *c, int
*error)</span> is the non-blocking way. It looks at the event
queue and returns (and dequeues too) an existing event into
a newly allocated structure. This structure has to be
freed. It returns <span class="code">NULL</span> if there is
no event. If an error occurs, the parameter <span
class="code">error</span> will be filled with the error
status.
</ul>
<p>
There are various ways to write such a loop. We present two
ways to write such a loop, with the two functions above. The
first one uses <span class="code">XCBWaitForEvent</span>, which
is similar to an event Xlib loop using only <span
class="code">XNextEvent</span>:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBGenericEvent *e;
while ((e = XCBWaitForEvent (c)))
{
switch (e-&gt;response_type &amp; ~0x80)
{
case XCBExpose:
{
/* Handle the Expose event type */
XCBExposeEvent *ev = (XCBExposeEvent *)e;
/* ... */
break;
}
case XCBButtonPress:
{
/* Handle the ButtonPress event type */
XCBButtonPressEvent *ev = (XCBButtonPressEvent *)e;
/* ... */
break;
}
default:
{
/* Unknown event type, ignore it */
break;
}
}
/* Free the Generic Event */
free (e);
}
</pre>
<p>
You will certainly want to use <span
class="code">XCBPollForEvent(XCBConnection *c, int
*error)</span> if, in Xlib, you use <span
class="code">XPending</span> or
<span class="code">XCheckMaskEvent</span>:
</p>
<pre class="code">
while (XPending (display))
{
XEvent ev;
XNextEvent(d, &amp;ev);
/* Manage your event */
}
</pre>
<p>
Such a loop in XCB looks like:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBGenericEvent *ev;
while ((ev = XCBPollForEvent (conn, 0)))
{
/* Manage your event */
}
</pre>
<p>
The events are managed in the same way as with <span
class="code">XCBWaitForEvent</span>.
Obviously, we will need to give the user some way of
terminating the program. This is usually done by handling a
special "quit" event, as we will soon see.
</p>
<div class="comp">
<div class="title">
Comparison Xlib/XCB
</div>
<div class="xlib">
<ul>
<li>XNextEvent ()
</ul>
</div>
<div class="xcb">
<ul>
<li>XCBWaitForEvent ()
</ul>
</div>
<div class="xlib">
<ul>
<li>XPending ()</li>
<li>XCheckMaskEvent ()</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="xcb">
<ul>
<li>XCBPollForEvent ()
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<br>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="expose">Expose events</a>
<p>
The <span class="code">Expose</span> event is one of the most
basic (and most used) events an application may receive. It
will be sent to us in one of several cases:
</p>
<ul>
<li>A window that covered part of our window has moved
away, exposing part (or all) of our window.
<li>Our window was raised above other windows.
<li>Our window mapped for the first time.
<li>Our window was de-iconified.
</ul>
<p>
You should note the implicit assumption hidden here: the
contents of our window is lost when it is being obscured
(covered) by either windows. One may wonder why the X server
does not save this contents. The answer is: to save
memory. After all, the number of windows on a display at a
given time may be very large, and storing the contents of all
of them might require a lot of memory. Actually, there is a
way to tell the X server to store the contents of a window in
special cases, as we will see later.
</p>
<p>
When we get an <span class="code">Expose</span> event, we
should take the event's data from the members of the following
structure:
</p>
<pre class="code">
typedef struct {
BYTE response_type; /* The type of the event, here it is XCBExpose */
CARD8 pad0;
CARD16 sequence;
XCBWINDOW window; /* The Id of the window that receives the event (in case */
/* our application registered for events on several windows */
CARD16 x; /* The x coordinate of the top-left part of the window that needs to be redrawn */
CARD16 y; /* The y coordinate of the top-left part of the window that needs to be redrawn */
CARD16 width; /* The width of the part of the window that needs to be redrawn */
CARD16 height; /* The height of the part of the window that needs to be redrawn */
CARD16 count;
} XCBExposeEvent;
</pre>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="userinput">Getting user input</a>
<p>
User input traditionally comes from two sources: the mouse
and the keyboard. Various event types exist to notify us of
user input (a key being presses on the keyboard, a key being
released on the keyboard, the mouse moving over our window,
the mouse entering (or leaving) our window, and so on.
</p>
<ol>
<li class="subsubtitle"><a name="mousepressrelease">Mouse button press and release events</a>
<p>
The first event type we will deal with is a mouse
button-press (or button-release) event in our window. In
order to register to such an event type, we should add one
(or more) of the following masks when we create our window:
</p>
<ul>
<li><span class="code">XCBEventMaskButtonPress</span>: notify us
of any button that was pressed in one of our windows.
<li><span class="code">XCBEventMaskButtonRelease</span>: notify us
of any button that was released in one of our windows.
</ul>
<p>
The structure to be checked for in our events loop is the
same for these two events, and is the following:
</p>
<pre class="code">
typedef struct {
BYTE response_type; /* The type of the event, here it is XCBButtonPressEvent or XCBButtonReleaseEvent */
XCBBUTTON detail;
CARD16 sequence;
XCBTIMESTAMP time; /* Time, in milliseconds the event took place in */
XCBWINDOW root;
XCBWINDOW event;
XCBWINDOW child;
INT16 root_x;
INT16 root_y;
INT16 event_x; /* The x coordinate where the mouse has been pressed in the window */
INT16 event_y; /* The y coordinate where the mouse has been pressed in the window */
CARD16 state; /* A mask of the buttons (or keys) during the event */
BOOL same_screen;
} XCBButtonPressEvent;
typedef XCBButtonPressEvent XCBButtonReleaseEvent;
</pre>
<p>
The <span class="code">time</span> field may be used to calculate "double-click"
situations by an application (e.g. if the mouse button was
clicked two times in a duration shorter than a given amount
of time, assume this was a double click).
</p>
<p>
The <span class="code">state</span> field is a mask of the buttons held down during
the event. It is a bitwise OR of any of the following (from the XCBButtonMask and
XCBModMask enumerations):
</p>
<ul>
<li><span class="code">XCBButtonMask1</span>
<li><span class="code">XCBButtonMask2</span>
<li><span class="code">XCBButtonMask3</span>
<li><span class="code">XCBButtonMask4</span>
<li><span class="code">XCBButtonMask5</span>
<li><span class="code">XCBModMaskShift</span>
<li><span class="code">XCBModMaskLock</span>
<li><span class="code">XCBModMaskControl</span>
<li><span class="code">XCBModMask1</span>
<li><span class="code">XCBModMask2</span>
<li><span class="code">XCBModMask3</span>
<li><span class="code">XCBModMask4</span>
<li><span class="code">XCBModMask5</span>
</ul>
<p>
Their names are self explanatory, where the first 5 refer to
the mouse buttons that are being pressed, while the rest
refer to various "special keys" that are being pressed (Mod1
is usually the 'Alt' key or the 'Meta' key).
</p>
<p>
<b>TODO:</b> Problem: it seems that the state does not
change when clicking with various buttons.
</p>
<li class="subsubtitle"><a name="mousemvnt">Mouse movement events</a>
<p>
Similar to mouse button press and release events, we also
can be notified of various mouse movement events. These can
be split into two families. One is of mouse pointer
movement while no buttons are pressed, and the second is a
mouse pointer motion while one (or more) of the buttons are
pressed (this is sometimes called "a mouse drag operation",
or just "dragging"). The following event masks may be added
during the creation of our window:
</p>
<ul>
<li><span class="code">XCBEventMaskPointerMotion</span>: events of
the pointer moving in one of the windows controlled by our
application, while no mouse button is held pressed.
<li><span class="code">XCBEventMaskButtonMotion</span>: Events of
the pointer moving while one or more of the mouse buttons
is held pressed.
<li><span class="code">XCBEventMaskButton1Motion</span>: same as
<span class="code">XCBEventMaskButtonMotion</span>, but only when
the 1st mouse button is held pressed.
<li><span class="code">XCBEventMaskButton2Motion</span>,
<span class="code">XCBEventMaskButton3Motion</span>,
<span class="code">XCBEventMaskButton4Motion</span>,
<span class="code">XCBEventMaskButton5Motion</span>: same as
<span class="code">XCBEventMaskButton1Motion</span>, but
respectively for 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th mouse button.
</ul>
<p>
The structure to be checked for in our events loop is the
same for these events, and is the following:
</p>
<pre class="code">
typedef struct {
BYTE response_type; /* The type of the event */
BYTE detail;
CARD16 sequence;
XCBTIMESTAMP time; /* Time, in milliseconds the event took place in */
XCBWINDOW root;
XCBWINDOW event;
XCBWINDOW child;
INT16 root_x;
INT16 root_y;
INT16 event_x; /* The x coordinate of the mouse when the event was generated */
INT16 event_y; /* The y coordinate of the mouse when the event was generated */
CARD16 state; /* A mask of the buttons (or keys) during the event */
BOOL same_screen;
} XCBMotionNotifyEvent;
</pre>
<li class="subsubtitle"><a name="mouseenter">Mouse pointer enter and leave events</a>
<p>
Another type of event that applications might be interested
in, is a mouse pointer entering a window the program
controls, or leaving such a window. Some programs use these
events to show the user that the application is now in
focus. In order to register for such an event type, we
should add one (or more) of the following masks when we
create our window:
</p>
<ul>
<li><span class="code">XCBEventEnterWindow</span>: notify us
when the mouse pointer enters any of our controlled
windows.
<li><span class="code">XCBEventLeaveWindow</span>: notify us
when the mouse pointer leaves any of our controlled
windows.
</ul>
<p>
The structure to be checked for in our events loop is the
same for these two events, and is the following:
</p>
<pre class="code">
typedef struct {
BYTE response_type; /* The type of the event */
BYTE detail;
CARD16 sequence;
XCBTIMESTAMP time; /* Time, in milliseconds the event took place in */
XCBWINDOW root;
XCBWINDOW event;
XCBWINDOW child;
INT16 root_x;
INT16 root_y;
INT16 event_x; /* The x coordinate of the mouse when the event was generated */
INT16 event_y; /* The y coordinate of the mouse when the event was generated */
CARD16 state; /* A mask of the buttons (or keys) during the event */
BYTE mode; /* The number of mouse button that was clicked */
BYTE same_screen_focus;
} XCBEnterNotifyEvent;
typedef XCBEnterNotifyEvent XCBLeaveNotifyEvent;
</pre>
<li class="subsubtitle"><a name="focus">The keyboard focus</a>
<p>
There may be many windows on a screen, but only a single
keyboard attached to them. How does the X server then know
which window should be sent a given keyboard input ? This is
done using the keyboard focus. Only a single window on the
screen may have the keyboard focus at a given time. There
is a XCB function that allows a program to set the keyboard
focus to a given window. The user can usually set the
keyboard focus using the window manager (often by clicking
on the title bar of the desired window). Once our window
has the keyboard focus, every key press or key release will
cause an event to be sent to our program (if it regsitered
for these event types...).
</p>
<li class="subsubtitle"><a name="keypress">Keyboard press and release events</a>
<p>
If a window controlled by our program currently holds the
keyboard focus, it can receive key press and key release
events. So, we should add one (or more) of the following
masks when we create our window:
</p>
<ul>
<li><span class="code">XCBEventMaskKeyPress</span>: notify us when
a key was pressed while any of our controlled windows had
the keyboard focus.
<li><span class="code">XCBEventMaskKeyRelease</span>: notify us
when a key was released while any of our controlled
windows had the keyboard focus.
</ul>
<p>
The structure to be checked for in our events loop is the
same for these two events, and is the following:
</p>
<pre class="code">
typedef struct {
BYTE response_type; /* The type of the event */
XCBKEYCODE detail;
CARD16 sequence;
XCBTIMESTAMP time; /* Time, in milliseconds the event took place in */
XCBWINDOW root;
XCBWINDOW event;
XCBWINDOW child;
INT16 root_x;
INT16 root_y;
INT16 event_x;
INT16 event_y;
CARD16 state;
BOOL same_screen;
} XCBKeyPressEvent;
typedef XCBKeyPressEvent XCBKeyReleaseEvent;
</pre>
<p>
The <span class="code">detail</span> field refers to the
physical key on the keyboard.
</p>
<p>
<b>TODO:</b> Talk about getting the ASCII code from the key code.
</p>
</ol>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="eventex">X events: a complete example</a>
<p>
As an example for handling events, we show a program that
creates a window, enters an events loop and checks for all the
events described above, and writes on the terminal the relevant
characteristics of the event. With this code, it should be
easy to add drawing operations, like those which have been
described above.
</p>
<pre class="code">
#include &lt;stdlib.h&gt;
#include &lt;stdio.h&gt;
#include &lt;X11/XCB/xcb.h&gt;
void
print_modifiers(CARD32 mask)
{
const char **mod, *mods[] = {
"Shift", "Lock", "Ctrl", "Alt",
"Mod2", "Mod3", "Mod4", "Mod5",
"Button1", "Button2", "Button3", "Button4", "Button5"
};
printf("Modifier mask: ");
for (mod = mods ; mask; mask &gt;&gt;= 1, mod++)
if (mask &amp; 1)
printf(*mod);
putchar('\n');
}
int
main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
XCBConnection *c;
XCBSCREEN *screen;
XCBDRAWABLE win;
XCBGenericEvent *e;
CARD32 mask = 0;
CARD32 values[2];
/* Open the connection to the X server */
c = XCBConnect (NULL, NULL);
/* Get the first screen */
screen = XCBSetupRootsIter (XCBGetSetup (c)).data;
/* Ask for our window's Id */
win.window = XCBWINDOWNew(c);
/* Create the window */
mask = XCBCWBackPixel | XCBCWEventMask;
values[0] = screen-&gt;white_pixel;
values[1] = XCBEventMaskExposure | XCBEventMaskButtonPress
| XCBEventMaskButtonRelease | XCBEventMaskPointerMotion
| XCBEventMaskEnterWindow | XCBEventMaskLeaveWindow
| XCBEventMaskKeyPress | XCBEventMaskKeyRelease;
XCBCreateWindow (c, /* Connection */
0, /* depth */
win.window, /* window Id */
screen-&gt;root, /* parent window */
0, 0, /* x, y */
150, 150, /* width, height */
10, /* border_width */
XCBWindowClassInputOutput,/* class */
screen-&gt;root_visual, /* visual */
mask, values); /* masks */
/* Map the window on the screen */
XCBMapWindow (c, win.window);
XCBFlush (c);
while ((e = XCBWaitForEvent (c)))
{
switch (e-&gt;response_type &amp; ~0x80)
{
case XCBExpose:
{
XCBExposeEvent *ev = (XCBExposeEvent *)e;
printf ("Window %ld exposed. Region to be redrawn at location (%d,%d), with dimension (%d,%d)\n",
ev-&gt;window.xid, ev-&gt;x, ev-&gt;y, ev-&gt;width, ev-&gt;height);
break;
}
case XCBButtonPress:
{
XCBButtonPressEvent *ev = (XCBButtonPressEvent *)e;
print_modifiers(ev-&gt;state);
switch (ev-&gt;detail.id)
{
case 4:
{
printf ("Wheel Button up in window %ld, at coordinates (%d,%d)\n",
ev-&gt;event.xid, ev-&gt;event_x, ev-&gt;event_y);
break;
}
case 5:
{
printf ("Wheel Button down in window %ld, at coordinates (%d,%d)\n",
ev-&gt;event.xid, ev-&gt;event_x, ev-&gt;event_y);
break;
}
default:
printf ("Button %d pressed in window %ld, at coordinates (%d,%d)\n",
ev-&gt;detail.id, ev-&gt;event.xid, ev-&gt;event_x, ev-&gt;event_y);
}
break;
}
case XCBButtonRelease:
{
XCBButtonReleaseEvent *ev = (XCBButtonReleaseEvent *)e;
print_modifiers(ev-&gt;state);
printf ("Button %d released in window %ld, at coordinates (%d,%d)\n",
ev-&gt;detail.id, ev-&gt;event.xid, ev-&gt;event_x, ev-&gt;event_y);
break;
}
case XCBMotionNotify:
{
XCBMotionNotifyEvent *ev = (XCBMotionNotifyEvent *)e;
printf ("Mouse moved in window %ld, at coordinates (%d,%d)\n",
ev-&gt;event.xid, ev-&gt;event_x, ev-&gt;event_y);
break;
}
case XCBEnterNotify:
{
XCBEnterNotifyEvent *ev = (XCBEnterNotifyEvent *)e;
printf ("Mouse entered window %ld, at coordinates (%d,%d)\n",
ev-&gt;event.xid, ev-&gt;event_x, ev-&gt;event_y);
break;
}
case XCBLeaveNotify:
{
XCBLeaveNotifyEvent *ev = (XCBLeaveNotifyEvent *)e;
printf ("Mouse left window %ld, at coordinates (%d,%d)\n",
ev-&gt;event.xid, ev-&gt;event_x, ev-&gt;event_y);
break;
}
case XCBKeyPress:
{
XCBKeyPressEvent *ev = (XCBKeyPressEvent *)e;
print_modifiers(ev-&gt;state);
printf ("Key pressed in window %ld\n",
ev-&gt;event.xid);
break;
}
case XCBKeyRelease:
{
XCBKeyReleaseEvent *ev = (XCBKeyReleaseEvent *)e;
print_modifiers(ev-&gt;state);
printf ("Key released in window %ld\n",
ev-&gt;event.xid);
break;
}
default:
{
/* Unknown event type, ignore it */
printf("Unknown event: %d\n", e-&gt;response_type);
break;
}
}
/* Free the Generic Event */
free (e);
}
return 1;
}
</pre>
</ol>
<li class="title"><a name="font">Handling text and fonts</a>
<p>
Besides drawing graphics on a window, we often want to draw
text. Text strings have two major properties: the characters to
be drawn and the font with which they are drawn. In order to
draw text, we need to first request the X server to load a
font. We then assign a font to a Graphic Context, and finally, we
draw the text in a window, using the Graphic Context.
</p>
<ol>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="fontstruct">The Font structure</a>
<p>
In order to support flexible fonts, a font structure is
defined. You know what ? It's an Id:
</p>
<pre class="code">
typedef struct {
CARD32 xid;
} XCBFONT;
</pre>
<p>
It is used to contain information about a font, and is passed
to several functions that handle fonts selection and text drawing.
</p>
<p>
<b>TODO:</b> example for picking a font and displaying some text.
Even better, also demonstrate translating keypresses to text.
</p>
</ol>
<li class="title"><a name="wm">Interacting with the window manager</a>
<p>
After we have seen how to create windows and draw on them, we
take one step back, and look at how our windows are interacting
with their environment (the full screen and the other
windows). First of all, our application needs to interact with
the window manager. The window manager is responsible to
decorating drawn windows (i.e. adding a frame, an iconify
button, a system menu, a title bar, etc), as well as handling
icons shown when windows are being iconified. It also handles
ordering of windows on the screen, and other administrative
tasks. We need to give it various hints as to how we want it to
treat our application's windows.
</p>
<ol>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="wmprop">Window properties</a>
<p>
Many of the parameters communicated to the window manager are
passed using data called "properties". These properties are
attached by the X server to different windows, and are stored
in a format that makes it possible to read them from different
machines that may use different architectures (remember that
an X client program may run on a remote machine).
</p>
<p>
The property and its type (a string, an integer, etc) are
Id. Their type are <span class="code">XCBATOM</span>:
</p>
<pre class="code">
typedef struct {
CARD32 xid;
} XCBATOM;
</pre>
<p>
To change the property of a window, we use the following
function:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBVoidCookie XCBChangeProperty (XCBConnection *c, /* Connection to the X server */
CARD8 mode, /* Property mode */
XCBWINDOW window, /* Window */
XCBATOM property, /* Property to change */
XCBATOM type, /* Type of the property */
CARD8 format, /* Format of the property (8, 16, 32) */
CARD32 data_len, /* Length of the data parameter */
const void *data); /* Data */
</pre>
<p>
The <span class="code">mode</span> parameter coud be one of
the following values (defined in enumeration XCBPropMode in
the xproto.h header file):
</p>
<ul>
<li>XCBPropModeReplace
<li>XCBPropModePrepend
<li>XCBPropModeAppend
</ul>
<br>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="wmname">Setting the window name and icon name</a>
<p>
The first thing we want to do would be to set the name for our
window. This is done using the
<span class="code">XCBChangeProperty()</span> function. This
name may be used by the window manager as the title of the
window (in the title bar), in a task list, etc. The property
atom to use to set the name of a window is
<span class="code">WM_NAME</span> (and
<span class="code">WM_ICON_NAME</span> for the iconified
window) and its type is <span class="code">STRING</span>. Here
is an example of utilization:
</p>
<pre class="code">
#include &lt;string.h&gt;
#include &lt;X11/XCB/xcb.h&gt;
#include &lt;X11/XCB/xcb_atom.h&gt;
int
main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
XCBConnection *c;
XCBSCREEN *screen;
XCBDRAWABLE win;
char *title = "Hello World !";
char *title_icon = "Hello World ! (iconified)";
/* Open the connection to the X server */
c = XCBConnect (NULL, NULL);
/* Get the first screen */
screen = XCBSetupRootsIter (XCBGetSetup (c)).data;
/* Ask for our window's Id */
win.window = XCBWINDOWNew(c);
/* Create the window */
XCBCreateWindow (c, /* Connection */
0, /* depth */
win.window, /* window Id */
screen-&gt;root, /* parent window */
0, 0, /* x, y */
250, 150, /* width, height */
10, /* border_width */
XCBWindowClassInputOutput,/* class */
screen-&gt;root_visual, /* visual */
0, NULL); /* masks, not used */
/* Set the title of the window */
XCBChangeProperty(c, XCBPropModeReplace, win.window,
WM_NAME, STRING, 8,
strlen(title), title);
/* Set the title of the window icon */
XCBChangeProperty(c, XCBPropModeReplace, win.window,
WM_ICON_NAME, STRING, 8,
strlen(title_icon), title_icon);
/* Map the window on the screen */
XCBMapWindow (c, win.window);
XCBFlush (c);
while (1) {}
return 1;
}
</pre>
<div class="emph">
<p>Note: the use of the atoms needs our program to be compiled
and linked against xcb_atom, so that we have to use
</p>
</div>
<pre class="text">
gcc prog.c -o prog `pkg-config --cflags --libs xcb_atom`
</pre>
<div class="emph">
<p>
for the program to compile fine.
</p>
</div>
</ol>
<li class="title"><a name="winop">Simple window operations</a>
<p>
One more thing we can do to our window is manipulate them on the
screen (resize them, move them, raise or lower them, iconify
them, and so on). Some window operations functions are supplied
by XCB for this purpose.
</p>
<ol>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="winmap">Mapping and un-mapping a window</a>
<p>
The first pair of operations we can apply on a window is
mapping it, or un-mapping it. Mapping a window causes the
window to appear on the screen, as we have seen in our simple
window program example. Un-mapping it causes it to be removed
from the screen (although the window as a logical entity still
exists). This gives the effect of making a window hidden
(unmapped) and shown again (mapped). For example, if we have a
dialog box window in our program, instead of creating it every
time the user asks to open it, we can create the window once,
in an un-mapped mode, and when the user asks to open it, we
simply map the window on the screen. When the user clicked the
'OK' or 'Cancel' button, we simply un-map the window. This is
much faster than creating and destroying the window, however,
the cost is wasted resources, both on the client side, and on
the X server side.
</p>
<p>
To map a window, you use the following function:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBVoidCookie XCBMapWindow(XCBConnection *c, XCBWINDOW window);
</pre>
<p>
To have a simple example, see the <a href="#helloworld">example</a>
above. The mapping operation will cause an
<span class="code">Expose</span> event to be sent to our
application, unless the window is completely covered by other
windows.
</p>
<p>
Un-mapping a window is also simple. You use the function
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBVoidCookie XCBUnmapWindow(XCBConnection *c, XCBWINDOW window);
</pre>
<p>
The utilization of this function is the same as
<span class="code">XCBMapWindow()</span>.
</p>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="winconf">Configuring a window</a>
<p>
As we have seen when we have created our first window, in the
X Events subsection, we can set some attributes for the window
(that is, the position, the size, the events the window will
receive, etc). If we want to modify them, but the window is
already created, we can change them by using the following
function:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBVoidCookie XCBConfigureWindow (XCBConnection *c, /* The connection to the X server*/
XCBWINDOW window, /* The window to configure */
CARD16 value_mask, /* The mask */
const CARD32 *value_list); /* The values to set */
</pre>
<p>
We set the <span class="code">value_mask</span> to one or
several mask values that are in the XCBConfigWindow enumeration in the xproto.h header:
</p>
<ul>
<li><span class="code">XCBConfigWindowX</span>: new x coordinate of the window's top left corner
<li><span class="code">XCBConfigWindowY</span>: new y coordinate of the window's top left corner
<li><span class="code">XCBConfigWindowWidth</span>: new width of the window
<li><span class="code">XCBConfigWindowHeight</span>: new height of the window
<li><span class="code">XCBConfigWindowBorderWidth</span>: new width of the border of the window
<li><span class="code">XCBConfigWindowSibling</span>
<li><span class="code">XCBConfigWindowStackMode</span>: the new stacking order
</ul>
<p>
We then give to <span class="code">value_mask</span> the new
value. We now describe how to use
<span class="code">XCBConfigureWindow</span> in some useful
situations.
</p>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="winmove">Moving a window around the screen</a>
<p>
An operation we might want to do with windows is to move them
to a different location. This can be done like this:
</p>
<pre class="code">
const static CARD32 values[] = { 10, 20 };
/* The connection c and the window win are supposed to be defined */
/* Move the window to coordinates x = 10 and y = 20 */
XCBConfigureWindow (c, win, XCBConfigWindowX | XCBConfigWindowY, values);
</pre>
<p>
Note that when the window is moved, it might get partially
exposed or partially hidden by other windows, and thus we
might get <span class="code">Expose</span> events due to this
operation.
</p>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="winsize">Resizing a window</a>
<p>
Yet another operation we can do is to change the size of a
window. This is done using the following code:
</p>
<pre class="code">
const static CARD32 values[] = { 200, 300 };
/* The connection c and the window win are supposed to be defined */
/* Resize the window to width = 10 and height = 20 */
XCBConfigureWindow (c, win, XCBConfigWindowWidth | XCBConfigWindowHeight, values);
</pre>
<p>
We can also combine the move and resize operations using one
single call to <span class="code">XCBConfigureWindow</span>:
</p>
<pre class="code">
const static CARD32 values[] = { 10, 20, 200, 300 };
/* The connection c and the window win are supposed to be defined */
/* Move the window to coordinates x = 10 and y = 20 */
/* and resize the window to width = 10 and height = 20 */
XCBConfigureWindow (c, win, XCBConfigWindowX | XCBConfigWindowY | XCBConfigWindowWidth | XCBConfigWindowHeight, values);
</pre>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="winstack">Changing windows stacking order: raise and lower</a>
<p>
Until now, we changed properties of a single window. We'll see
that there are properties that relate to the window and other
windows. One of them is the stacking order. That is, the order
in which the windows are layered on top of each other. The
front-most window is said to be on the top of the stack, while
the back-most window is at the bottom of the stack. Here is
how to manipulate our windows stack order:
</p>
<pre class="code">
const static CARD32 values[] = { XCBStackModeAbove };
/* The connection c and the window win are supposed to be defined */
/* Move the window on the top of the stack */
XCBConfigureWindow (c, win, XCBConfigWindowStackMode, values);
</pre>
<pre class="code">
const static CARD32 values[] = { XCBStackModeBelow };
/* The connection c and the window win are supposed to be defined */
/* Move the window on the bottom of the stack */
XCBConfigureWindow (c, win, XCBConfigWindowStackMode, values);
</pre>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="wingetinfo">Getting information about a window</a>
<p>
Just like we can set various attributes of our windows, we can
also ask the X server supply the current values of these
attributes. For example, we can check where a window is
located on the screen, what is its current size, whether it is
mapped or not, etc. The structure that contains some of this
information is
</p>
<pre class="code">
typedef struct {
BYTE response_type;
CARD8 depth; /* depth of the window */
CARD16 sequence;
CARD32 length;
XCBWINDOW root; /* Id of the root window *>
INT16 x; /* X coordinate of the window's location */
INT16 y; /* Y coordinate of the window's location */
CARD16 width; /* Width of the window */
CARD16 height; /* Height of the window */
CARD16 border_width; /* Width of the window's border */
} XCBGetGeometryRep;
</pre>
<p>
XCB fill this structure with two functions:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBGetGeometryCookie XCBGetGeometry (XCBConnection *c,
XCBDRAWABLE drawable);
XCBGetGeometryRep *XCBGetGeometryReply (XCBConnection *c,
XCBGetGeometryCookie cookie,
XCBGenericError **e);
</pre>
<p>
You use them as follows:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBConnection *c;
XCBDRAWABLE win;
XCBGetGeometryRep *geom;
/* You initialize c and win */
geom = XCBGetGeometryReply (c, XCBGetGeometry (c, win), 0);
/* Do something with the fields of geom */
free (geom);
</pre>
<p>
Remark that you have to free the structure, as
<span class="code">XCBGetGeometryReply</span> allocates a
newly one.
</p>
<p>
One problem is that the returned location of the window is
relative to its parent window. This makes these coordinates
rather useless for any window manipulation functions, like
moving it on the screen. In order to overcome this problem, we
need to take a two-step operation. First, we find out the Id
of the parent window of our window. We then translate the
above relative coordinates to the screen coordinates.
</p>
<p>
To get the Id of the parent window, we need this structure:
</p>
<pre class="code">
typedef struct {
BYTE response_type;
CARD8 pad0;
CARD16 sequence;
CARD32 length;
XCBWINDOW root;
XCBWINDOW parent; /* Id of the parent window */
CARD16 children_len;
CARD8 pad1[14];
} XCBQueryTreeRep;
</pre>
<p>
To fill this structure, we use these two functions:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBQueryTreeCookie XCBQueryTree (XCBConnection *c,
XCBWINDOW window);
XCBQueryTreeRep *XCBQueryTreeReply (XCBConnection *c,
XCBQueryTreeCookie cookie,
XCBGenericError **e);
</pre>
<p>
The translated coordinates will be found in this structure:
</p>
<pre class="code">
typedef struct {
BYTE response_type;
BOOL same_screen;
CARD16 sequence;
CARD32 length;
XCBWINDOW child;
CARD16 dst_x; /* Translated x coordinate */
CARD16 dst_y; /* Translated y coordinate */
} XCBTranslateCoordinatesRep;
</pre>
<p>
As usual, we need two functions to fill this structure:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBTranslateCoordinatesCookie XCBTranslateCoordinates (XCBConnection *c,
XCBWINDOW src_window,
XCBWINDOW dst_window,
INT16 src_x,
INT16 src_y);
XCBTranslateCoordinatesRep *XCBTranslateCoordinatesReply (XCBConnection *c,
XCBTranslateCoordinatesCookie cookie,
XCBGenericError **e);
</pre>
<p>
We use them as follows:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBConnection *c;
XCBDRAWABLE win;
XCBGetGeometryRep *geom;
XCBQueryTreeRep *tree;
XCBTranslateCoordinatesRep *trans;
/* You initialize c and win */
geom = XCBGetGeometryReply (c, XCBGetGeometry (c, win), 0);
if (!geom)
return 0;
tree = XCBQueryTreeReply (c, XCBQueryTree (c, win), 0);
if (!tree)
return 0;
trans = XCBTranslateCoordinatesReply (c,
XCBTranslateCoordinates (c,
win,
tree-&gt;parent,
geom-&gt;x, geom-&gt;y),
0);
if (!trans)
return 0;
/* the translated coordinates are in trans-&gt;dst_x and trans-&gt;dst_y */
free (trans);
free (tree);
free (geom);
</pre>
<p>
Of course, as for <span class="code">geom</span>,
<span class="code">tree</span> and
<span class="code">trans</span> have to be freed.
</p>
<p>
The work is a bit hard, but XCB is a very low-level library.
</p>
<p>
<b>TODO:</b> the utilization of these functions should be a
prog, which displays the coordinates of the window.
</p>
<p>
There is another structure that gives informations about our window:
</p>
<pre class="code">
typedef struct {
BYTE response_type;
CARD8 backing_store;
CARD16 sequence;
CARD32 length;
XCBVISUALID visual; /* Visual of the window */
CARD16 _class;
CARD8 bit_gravity;
CARD8 win_gravity;
CARD32 backing_planes;
CARD32 backing_pixel;
BOOL save_under;
BOOL map_is_installed;
CARD8 map_state; /* Map state of the window */
BOOL override_redirect;
XCBCOLORMAP colormap; /* Colormap of the window */
CARD32 all_event_masks;
CARD32 your_event_mask;
CARD16 do_not_propagate_mask;
} XCBGetWindowAttributesRep;
</pre>
<p>
XCB supplies these two functions to fill it:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBGetWindowAttributesCookie XCBGetWindowAttributes (XCBConnection *c,
XCBWINDOW window);
XCBGetWindowAttributesRep *XCBGetWindowAttributesReply (XCBConnection *c,
XCBGetWindowAttributesCookie cookie,
XCBGenericError **e);
</pre>
<p>
You use them as follows:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBConnection *c;
XCBDRAWABLE win;
XCBGetWindowAttributesRep *attr;
/* You initialize c and win */
attr = XCBGetWindowAttributesReply (c, XCBGetWindowAttributes (c, win), 0);
if (!attr)
return 0;
/* Do something with the fields of attr */
free (attr);
</pre>
<p>
As for <span class="code">geom</span>,
<span class="code">attr</span> has to be freed.
</p>
</ol>
<li class="title"><a name="usecolor">Using colors to paint the rainbow</a>
<p>
Up until now, all our painting operation were done using black
and white. We will (finally) see now how to draw using colors.
</p>
<ol>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="colormap">Color maps</a>
<p>
In the beginning, there were not enough colors. Screen
controllers could only support a limited number of colors
simultaneously (initially 2, then 4, 16 and 256). Because of
this, an application could not just ask to draw in a "light
purple-red" color, and expect that color to be available. Each
application allocated the colors it needed, and when all the
color entries (4, 16, 256 colors) were in use, the next color
allocation would fail.
</p>
<p>
Thus, the notion of "a color map" was introduced. A color map
is a table whose size is the same as the number of
simultaneous colors a given screen controller. Each entry
contained the RGB (Red, Green and Blue) values of a different
color (all colors can be drawn using some combination of red,
green and blue). When an application wants to draw on the
screen, it does not specify which color to use. Rather, it
specifies which color entry of some color map to be used
during this drawing. Change the value in this color map entry
and the drawing will use a different color.
</p>
<p>
In order to be able to draw using colors that got something to
do with what the programmer intended, color map allocation
functions are supplied. You could ask to allocate entry for a
color with a set of RGB values. If one already existed, you
would get its index in the table. If none existed, and the
table was not full, a new cell would be allocated to contain
the given RGB values, and its index returned. If the table was
full, the procedure would fail. You could then ask to get a
color map entry with a color that is closest to the one you
were asking for. This would mean that the actual drawing on
the screen would be done using colors similar to what you
wanted, but not the same.
</p>
<p>
On today's more modern screens where one runs an X server with
support for 16 million colors, this limitation looks a little
silly, but remember that there are still older computers with
older graphics cards out there. Using color map, support for
these screen becomes transparent to you. On a display
supporting 16 million colors, any color entry allocation
request would succeed. On a display supporting a limited
number of colors, some color allocation requests would return
similar colors. It won't look as good, but your application
would still work.
</p>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="colormapalloc">Allocating and freeing Color Maps</a>
<p>
When you draw using XCB, you can choose to use the standard
color map of the screen your window is displayed on, or you
can allocate a new color map and apply it to a window. In the
latter case, each time the mouse moves onto your window, the
screen color map will be replaced by your window's color map,
and you'll see all the other windows on screen change their
colors into something quite bizzare. In fact, this is the
effect you get with X applications that use the "-install"
command line option.
</p>
<p>
In XCB, a color map is (as often in X) an Id:
</p>
<pre class="code">
typedef struct {
CARD32 xid;
} XCBCOLORMAP;
</pre>
<p>
In order to access the screen's default color map, you just
have to retrieve the <span class="code">default_colormap</span>
field of the <span class="code">XCBSCREEN</span> structure
(see Section
<a href="#screen">Checking basic information about a connection</a>):
</p>
<pre class="code">
#include &lt;stdio.h&gt;
#include &lt;X11/XCB/xcb.h&gt;
int
main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
XCBConnection *c;
XCBSCREEN *screen;
XCBCOLORMAP colormap;
/* Open the connection to the X server and get the first screen */
c = XCBConnect (NULL, NULL);
screen = XCBSetupRootsIter (XCBGetSetup (c)).data;
colormap = screen-&gt;default_colormap;
return 1;
}
</pre>
<p>
This will return the color map used by default on the first
screen (again, remember that an X server may support several
different screens, each of which might have its own resources).
</p>
<p>
The other option, that of allocating a new colormap, works as
follows. We first ask the X server to give an Id to our color
map, with this function:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBCOLORMAP XCBCOLORMAPNew (XCBConnection *c);
</pre>
<p>
Then, we create the color map with
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBVoidCookie XCBCreateColormap (XCBConnection *c, /* Pointer to the XCBConnection structure */
BYTE alloc, /* Colormap entries to be allocated (AllocNone or AllocAll) */
XCBCOLORMAP mid, /* Id of the color map */
XCBWINDOW window, /* Window on whose screen the colormap will be created */
XCBVISUALID visual); /* Id of the visual supported by the screen */
</pre>
<p>
Here is an example of creation of a new color map:
</p>
<pre class="code">
#include &lt;X11/XCB/xcb.h&gt;
int
main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
XCBConnection *c;
XCBSCREEN *screen;
XCBWINDOW win;
XCBCOLORMAP cmap
/* Open the connection to the X server and get the first screen */
c = XCBConnect (NULL, NULL);
screen = XCBSetupRootsIter (XCBGetSetup (c)).data;
/* We create the window win here*/
cmap = XCBCOLORMAPNew (c);
XCBCreateColormap (c, XCBColormapAllocNone, cmap, win, screen-&gt;root_visual);
return 1;
}
</pre>
<p>
Note that the window parameter is only used to allow the X
server to create the color map for the given screen. We can
then use this color map for any window drawn on the same screen.
</p>
<p>
To free a color map, it suffices to use this function:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBVoidCookie XCBFreeColormap (XCBConnection *c, /* The connection */
XCBCOLORMAP cmap); /* The color map */
</pre>
<div class="comp">
<div class="title">
Comparison Xlib/XCB
</div>
<div class="xlib">
<ul>
<li>XCreateColormap ()
</ul>
</div>
<div class="xcb">
<ul>
<li>XCBCOLORMAPNew ()
<li>XCBCreateColormap ()
</ul>
</div>
<div class="xlib">
<ul>
<li>XFreeColormap ()
</ul>
</div>
<div class="xcb">
<ul>
<li>XCBFreeColormap ()
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<br>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="alloccolor">Allocating and freeing a color entry</a>
<p>
Once we got access to some color map, we can start allocating
colors. The informations related to a color are stored in the
following structure:
</p>
<pre class="code">
typedef struct {
BYTE response_type;
CARD8 pad0;
CARD16 sequence;
CARD32 length;
CARD16 red; /* The red component */
CARD16 green; /* The green component */
CARD16 blue; /* The blue component */
CARD8 pad1[2];
CARD32 pixel; /* The entry in the color map, supplied by the X server */
} XCBAllocColorRep;
</pre>
<p>
XCB supplies these two functions to fill it:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBAllocColorCookie XCBAllocColor (XCBConnection *c,
XCBCOLORMAP cmap,
CARD16 red,
CARD16 green,
CARD16 blue);
XCBAllocColorRep *XCBAllocColorReply (XCBConnection *c,
XCBAllocColorCookie cookie,
XCBGenericError **e);
</pre>
<p>
The fuction <span class="code">XCBAllocColor()</span> takes the
3 RGB components as parameters (red, green and blue). Here is an
example of using these functions:
</p>
<pre class="code">
#include &lt;malloc.h&gt;
#include &lt;X11/XCB/xcb.h&gt;
int
main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
XCBConnection *c;
XCBSCREEN *screen;
XCBWINDOW win;
XCBCOLORMAP cmap;
XCBAllocColorRep *rep;
/* Open the connection to the X server and get the first screen */
c = XCBConnect (NULL, NULL);
screen = XCBSetupRootsIter (XCBGetSetup (c)).data;
/* We create the window win here*/
cmap = XCBCOLORMAPNew (c);
XCBCreateColormap (c, XCBColormapAllocNone, cmap, win, screen-&gt;root_visual);
rep = XCBAllocColorReply (c, XCBAllocColor (c, cmap, 65535, 0, 0), 0);
if (!rep)
return 0;
/* Do something with r-&gt;pixel or the components */
free (rep);
return 1;
}
</pre>
<p>
As <span class="code">XCBAllocColorReply()</span> allocates
memory, you have to free <span class="code">rep</span>.
</p>
<p>
<b>TODO</b>: Talk about freeing colors.
</p>
</ol>
<li class="title"><a name="pixmaps">X Bitmaps and Pixmaps</a>
<p>
One thing many so-called "Multi-Media" applications need to do,
is display images. In the X world, this is done using bitmaps
and pixmaps. We have already seen some usage of them when
setting an icon for our application. Lets study them further,
and see how to draw these images inside a window, along side the
simple graphics and text we have seen so far.
</p>
<p>
One thing to note before delving further, is that XCB (nor Xlib)
supplies no means of manipulating popular image formats, such as
gif, png, jpeg or tiff. It is up to the programmer (or to higher
level graphics libraries) to translate these image formats into
formats that the X server is familiar with (x bitmaps and x
pixmaps).
</p>
<ol>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="pixmapswhat">What is a X Bitmap? An X Pixmap?</a>
<p>
An X bitmap is a two-color image stored in a format specific
to the X window system. When stored in a file, the bitmap data
looks like a C source file. It contains variables defining the
width and the height of the bitmap, an array containing the
bit values of the bitmap (the size of the array is
(width+7)/8*height and the bit and byte order are LSB), and
an optional hot-spot location (that will
be explained later, when discussing mouse cursors).
</p>
<p>
An X pixmap is a format used to stored images in the memory of
an X server. This format can store both black and white images
(such as x bitmaps) as well as color images. It is the only
image format supported by the X protocol, and any image to be
drawn on screen, should be first translated into this format.
</p>
<p>
In actuality, an X pixmap can be thought of as a window that
does not appear on the screen. Many graphics operations that
work on windows, will also work on pixmaps. Indeed, the type
of X pixmap in XCB is an Id like a window:
</p>
<pre class="code">
typedef struct {
CARD32 xid;
} XCBPIXMAP;
</pre>
<p>
In order to make the difference between a window and a pixmap,
XCB introduces a drawable type, which is a <b>union</b>
</p>
<pre class="code">
typedef union {
XCBWINDOW window;
XCBPIXMAP pixmap;
} XCBDRAWABLE;
</pre>
<p>
in order to avoid confusion between a window and a pixmap. The
operations that will work the same on a window or a pixmap
will require a <span class="code">XCBDRAWABLE</span>
</p>
<div class="emph">
<p>
Remark: In Xlib, there is no specific difference between a
<span class="code">Drawable</span>, a
<span class="code">Pixmap</span> or a
<span class="code">Window</span>: all are 32 bit long
integer. XCB wraps all these different IDs in structures to
provide some measure of type-safety.
</p>
</div>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="pixmapscreate">Creating a pixmap</a>
<p>
Sometimes we want to create an un-initialized pixmap, so we
can later draw into it. This is useful for image drawing
programs (creating a new empty canvas will cause the creation
of a new pixmap on which the drawing can be stored). It is
also useful when reading various image formats: we load the
image data into memory, create a pixmap on the server, and
then draw the decoded image data onto that pixmap.
</p>
<p>
To create a new pixmap, we first ask the X server to give an
Id to our pixmap, with this function:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBPIXMAP XCBPIXMAPNew (XCBConnection *c);
</pre>
<p>
Then, XCB supplies the following function to create new pixmaps:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBVoidCookie XCBCreatePixmap (XCBConnection *c, /* Pointer to the XCBConnection structure */
CARD8 depth, /* Depth of the screen */
XCBPIXMAP pid, /* Id of the pixmap */
XCBDRAWABLE drawable,
CARD16 width, /* Width of the window (in pixels) */
CARD16 height); /* Height of the window (in pixels) */
</pre>
<p>
<b>TODO</b>: Explain the drawable parameter, and give an
example (like <a href="xpoints.c">xpoints.c</a>)
</p>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="pixmapsdraw"></a>Drawing a pixmap in a window
<p>
Once we got a handle to a pixmap, we can draw it on some
window, using the following function:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBVoidCookie XCBCopyArea (XCBConnection *c, /* Pointer to the XCBConnection structure */
XCBDRAWABLE src_drawable, /* The Drawable we want to paste */
XCBDRAWABLE dst_drawable, /* The Drawable on which we copy the previous Drawable */
XCBGCONTEXT gc, /* A Graphic Context */
INT16 src_x, /* Top left x coordinate of the region we want to copy */
INT16 src_y, /* Top left y coordinate of the region we want to copy */
INT16 dst_x, /* Top left x coordinate of the region where we want to copy */
INT16 dst_y, /* Top left y coordinate of the region where we want to copy */
CARD16 width, /* Width of the region we want to copy */
CARD16 height); /* Height of the region we want to copy */
</pre>
<p>
As you can see, we could copy the whole pixmap, as well as
only a given rectangle of the pixmap. This is useful to
optimize the drawing speed: we could copy only what we have
modified in the pixmap.
</p>
<p>
<b>One important note should be made</b>: it is possible to
create pixmaps with different depths on the same screen. When
we perform copy operations (a pixmap onto a window, etc), we
should make sure that both source and target have the same
depth. If they have a different depth, the operation would
fail. The exception to this is if we copy a specific bit plane
of the source pixmap using the
<span class="code">XCBCopyPlane</span> function. In such an
event, we can copy a specific plane to the target window (in
actuality, setting a specific bit in the color of each pixel
copied). This can be used to generate strange graphic effects
in a window, but that is beyond the scope of this tutorial.
</p>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="pixmapsfree"></a>Freeing a pixmap
<p>
Finally, when we are done using a given pixmap, we should free
it, in order to free resources of the X server. This is done
using this function:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBVoidCookie XCBFreePixmap (XCBConnection *c, /* Pointer to the XCBConnection structure */
XCBPIXMAP pixmap); /* A given pixmap */
</pre>
<p>
Of course, after having freed it, we must not try accessing
the pixmap again.
</p>
<p>
<b>TODO</b>: Give an example, or a link to xpoints.c
</p>
</ol>
<li class="title"><a name="translation">Translation of basic Xlib functions and macros</a>
<p>
The problem when you want to port an Xlib program to XCB is that
you don't know if the Xlib function that you want to "translate"
is a X Window one or an Xlib macro. In that section, we describe
a way to translate the usual functions or macros that Xlib
provides. It's usually just a member of a structure.
</p>
<ol>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="displaystructure">Members of the Display structure</a>
In this section, we look at how to translate the macros that
return some members of the <span class="code">Display</span>
structure. They are obtained by using a function that requires a
<span class="code">XCBConnection *</span> or a member of the
<span class="code">XCBSetup</span> structure
(via the function <span class="code">XCBGetSetup</span>), or
a function that requires that structure.
<ol>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="ConnectionNumber">ConnectionNumber</a>
<p>
This number is the file descriptor that connects the client
to the server. You just have to use that function:
</p>
<pre class="code">
int XCBGetFileDescriptor(XCBConnection *c);
</pre>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="DefaultScreen"></a>DefaultScreen
<p>
That number is not stored by XCB. It is returned in the
second parameter of the function <span class="code"><a href="#openconn">XCBConnect</a></span>.
Hence, you have to store it yourself if you want to use
it. Then, to get the <span class="code">XCBSCREEN</span>
structure, you have to iterate on the screens.
The equivalent function of the Xlib's
<span class="code">ScreenOfDisplay</span> function can be
found <a href="#ScreenOfDisplay">below</a>. This is also provided in the
XCBAux library as <span class="code">XCBAuxGetScreen()</span>. OK, here is the
small piece of code to get that number:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBConnection *c;
int screen_default_nbr;
/* you pass the name of the display you want to XCBConnect */
c = XCBConnect (display_name, &amp;screen_default_nbr);
/* screen_default_nbr contains now the number of the default screen */
</pre>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="QLength"></a>QLength
<p>
Not documented yet.
</p>
<p>
However, this points out a basic difference in philosophy between
Xlib and XCB. Xlib has several functions for filtering and
manipulating the incoming and outgoing X message queues. XCB
wishes to hide this as much as possible from the user, which
allows for more freedom in implementation strategies.
</p>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="ScreenCount"></a>ScreenCount
<p>
You get the count of screens with the functions
<span class="code">XCBGetSetup</span>
and
<span class="code">XCBSetupRootsIter</span>
(if you need to iterate):
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBConnection *c;
int screen_count;
/* you init the connection */
screen_count = XCBSetupRootsIter (XCBGetSetup (c)).rem;
/* screen_count contains now the count of screens */
</pre>
<p>
If you don't want to iterate over the screens, a better way
to get that number is to use
<span class="code">XCBSetupRootsLength</span>:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBConnection *c;
int screen_count;
/* you init the connection */
screen_count = XCBSetupRootsLength (XCBGetSetup (c));
/* screen_count contains now the count of screens */
</pre>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="ServerVendor"></a>ServerVendor
<p>
You get the name of the vendor of the server hardware with
the functions <span class="code">XCBGetSetup</span>
and
<span
class="code">XCBSetupVendor</span>. Beware
that, unlike Xlib, the string returned by XCB is not
necessarily null-terminaled:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBConnection *c;
char *vendor = NULL;
int length;
/* you init the connection */
length = XCBSetupVendorLength (XCBGetSetup (c));
vendor = (char *)malloc (length + 1);
if (vendor)
memcpy (vendor, XCBSetupVendor (XCBGetSetup (c)), length);
vendor[length] = '\0';
/* vendor contains now the name of the vendor. Must be freed when not used anymore */
</pre>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="ProtocolVersion"></a>ProtocolVersion
<p>
You get the major version of the protocol in the
<span class="code">XCBSetup</span>
structure, with the function <span class="code">XCBGetSetup</span>:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBConnection *c;
CARD16 protocol_major_version;
/* you init the connection */
protocol_major_version = XCBGetSetup (c)-&gt;protocol_major_version;
/* protocol_major_version contains now the major version of the protocol */
</pre>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="ProtocolRevision"></a>ProtocolRevision
<p>
You get the minor version of the protocol in the
<span class="code">XCBSetup</span>
structure, with the function <span class="code">XCBGetSetup</span>:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBConnection *c;
CARD16 protocol_minor_version;
/* you init the connection */
protocol_minor_version = XCBGetSetup (c)-&gt;protocol_minor_version;
/* protocol_minor_version contains now the minor version of the protocol */
</pre>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="VendorRelease"></a>VendorRelease
<p>
You get the number of the release of the server hardware in the
<span class="code">XCBSetup</span>
structure, with the function <span class="code">XCBGetSetup</span>:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBConnection *c;
CARD32 release_number;
/* you init the connection */
release_number = XCBGetSetup (c)-&gt;release_number;
/* release_number contains now the number of the release of the server hardware */
</pre>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="DisplayString"></a>DisplayString
<p>
The name of the display is not stored in XCB. You have to
store it by yourself.
</p>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="BitmapUnit"></a>BitmapUnit
<p>
You get the bitmap scanline unit in the
<span class="code">XCBSetup</span>
structure, with the function <span class="code">XCBGetSetup</span>:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBConnection *c;
CARD8 bitmap_format_scanline_unit;
/* you init the connection */
bitmap_format_scanline_unit = XCBGetSetup (c)-&gt;bitmap_format_scanline_unit;
/* bitmap_format_scanline_unit contains now the bitmap scanline unit */
</pre>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="BitmapBitOrder"></a>BitmapBitOrder
<p>
You get the bitmap bit order in the
<span class="code">XCBSetup</span>
structure, with the function <span class="code">XCBGetSetup</span>:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBConnection *c;
CARD8 bitmap_format_bit_order;
/* you init the connection */
bitmap_format_bit_order = XCBGetSetup (c)-&gt;bitmap_format_bit_order;
/* bitmap_format_bit_order contains now the bitmap bit order */
</pre>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="BitmapPad"></a>BitmapPad
<p>
You get the bitmap scanline pad in the
<span class="code">XCBSetup</span>
structure, with the function <span class="code">XCBGetSetup</span>:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBConnection *c;
CARD8 bitmap_format_scanline_pad;
/* you init the connection */
bitmap_format_scanline_pad = XCBGetSetup (c)-&gt;bitmap_format_scanline_pad;
/* bitmap_format_scanline_pad contains now the bitmap scanline pad */
</pre>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="ImageByteOrder"></a>ImageByteOrder
<p>
You get the image byte order in the
<span class="code">XCBSetup</span>
structure, with the function <span class="code">XCBGetSetup</span>:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBConnection *c;
CARD8 image_byte_order;
/* you init the connection */
image_byte_order = XCBGetSetup (c)-&gt;image_byte_order;
/* image_byte_order contains now the image byte order */
</pre>
</ol>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="screenofdisplay">ScreenOfDisplay related functions</a>
<p>
in Xlib, <span class="code">ScreenOfDisplay</span> returns a
<span class="code">Screen</span> structure that contains
several characteristics of your screen. XCB has a similar
structure (<span class="code">XCBSCREEN</span>),
but the way to obtain it is a bit different. With
Xlib, you just provide the number of the screen and you grab it
from an array. With XCB, you iterate over all the screens to
obtain the one you want. The complexity of this operation is
O(n). So the best is to store this structure if you use
it often. See <a href="#ScreenOfDisplay">ScreenOfDisplay</a> just below.
</p>
<p>
Xlib provides generally two functions to obtain the characteristics
related to the screen. One with the display and the number of
the screen, which calls <span class="code">ScreenOfDisplay</span>,
and the other that uses the <span class="code">Screen</span> structure.
This might be a bit confusing. As mentioned above, with XCB, it
is better to store the <span class="code">XCBSCREEN</span>
structure. Then, you have to read the members of this
structure. That's why the Xlib functions are put by pairs (or
more) as, with XCB, you will use the same code.
</p>
<ol>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="ScreenOfDisplay">ScreenOfDisplay</a>
<p>
This function returns the Xlib <span class="code">Screen</span>
structure. With XCB, you iterate over all the screens and
once you get the one you want, you return it:
</p>
<pre class="code"><a name="ScreenOfDisplay"></a>
XCBSCREEN *ScreenOfDisplay (XCBConnection *c,
int screen)
{
XCBSCREENIter iter;
iter = XCBSetupRootsIter (XCBGetSetup (c));
for (; iter.rem; --screen, XCBSCREENNext (&amp;iter))
if (screen == 0)
return iter.data;
return NULL;
}
</pre>
<p>
As mentioned above, you might want to store the value
returned by this function.
</p>
<p>
All the functions below will use the result of that
function, as they just grab a specific member of the
<span class="code">XCBSCREEN</span> structure.
</p>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="DefaultScreenOfDisplay"></a>DefaultScreenOfDisplay
<p>
It is the default screen that you obtain when you connect to
the X server. It suffices to call the <a href="#ScreenOfDisplay">ScreenOfDisplay</a>
function above with the connection and the number of the
default screen.
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBConnection *c;
int screen_default_nbr;
XCBSCREEN *default_screen; /* the returned default screen */
/* you pass the name of the display you want to XCBConnect */
c = XCBConnect (display_name, &amp;screen_default_nbr);
default_screen = ScreenOfDisplay (c, screen_default_nbr);
/* default_screen contains now the default root window, or a NULL window if no screen is found */
</pre>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="RootWindow">RootWindow / RootWindowOfScreen</a>
<p>
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBConnection *c;
XCBSCREEN *screen;
int screen_nbr;
XCBWINDOW root_window = { 0 }; /* the returned window */
/* you init the connection and screen_nbr */
screen = ScreenOfDisplay (c, screen_nbr);
if (screen)
root_window = screen-&gt;root;
/* root_window contains now the root window, or a NULL window if no screen is found */
</pre>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="DefaultRootWindow">DefaultRootWindow</a>
<p>
It is the root window of the default screen. So, you call
<a name="ScreenOfDisplay">ScreenOfDisplay</a> with the
default screen number and you get the
<a href="#RootWindow">root window</a> as above:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBConnection *c;
XCBSCREEN *screen;
int screen_default_nbr;
XCBWINDOW root_window = { 0 }; /* the returned root window */
/* you pass the name of the display you want to XCBConnect */
c = XCBConnect (display_name, &amp;screen_default_nbr);
screen = ScreenOfDisplay (c, screen_default_nbr);
if (screen)
root_window = screen-&gt;root;
/* root_window contains now the default root window, or a NULL window if no screen is found */
</pre>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="DefaultVisual">DefaultVisual / DefaultVisualOfScreen</a>
<p>
While a Visual is, in Xlib, a structure, in XCB, there are
two types: <span class="code">XCBVISUALID</span>, which is
the Id of the visual, and <span class="code">XCBVISUALTYPE</span>,
which corresponds to the Xlib Visual. To get the Id of the
visual of a screen, just get the
<span class="code">root_visual</span>
member of a <span class="code">XCBSCREEN</span>:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBConnection *c;
XCBSCREEN *screen;
int screen_nbr;
XCBVISUALID root_visual = { 0 }; /* the returned visual Id */
/* you init the connection and screen_nbr */
screen = ScreenOfDisplay (c, screen_nbr);
if (screen)
root_visual = screen-&gt;root_visual;
/* root_visual contains now the value of the Id of the visual, or a NULL visual if no screen is found */
</pre>
<p>
To get the <span class="code">XCBVISUALTYPE</span>
structure, it's a bit less easy. You have to get the
<span class="code">XCBSCREEN</span> structure that you want,
get its <span class="code">root_visual</span> member,
then iterate over the <span class="code">XCBDEPTH</span>s
and the <span class="code">XCBVISUALTYPE</span>s, and compare
the <span class="code">XCBVISUALID</span> of these <span class="code">XCBVISUALTYPE</span>s:
with <span class="code">root_visual</span>:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBConnection *c;
XCBSCREEN *screen;
int screen_nbr;
XCBVISUALID root_visual = { 0 };
XCBVISUALTYPE *visual_type = NULL; /* the returned visual type */
/* you init the connection and screen_nbr */
screen = ScreenOfDisplay (c, screen_nbr);
if (screen)
{
XCBDEPTHIter depth_iter;
depth_iter = XCBSCREENAllowedDepthsIter (screen);
for (; depth_iter.rem; XCBDEPTHNext (&amp;depth_iter))
{
XCBVISUALTYPEIter visual_iter;
visual_iter = XCBDEPTHVisualsIter (depth_iter.data);
for (; visual_iter.rem; XCBVISUALTYPENext (&amp;visual_iter))
{
if (screen-&gt;root_visual.id == visual_iter.data-&gt;visual_id.id)
{
visual_type = visual_iter.data;
break;
}
}
}
}
/* visual_type contains now the visual structure, or a NULL visual structure if no screen is found */
</pre>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="DefaultGC">DefaultGC / DefaultGCOfScreen</a>
<p>
This default Graphic Context is just a newly created Graphic
Context, associated to the root window of a
<span class="code">XCBSCREEN</span>,
using the black white pixels of that screen:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBConnection *c;
XCBSCREEN *screen;
int screen_nbr;
XCBGCONTEXT gc = { 0 }; /* the returned default graphic context */
/* you init the connection and screen_nbr */
screen = ScreenOfDisplay (c, screen_nbr);
if (screen)
{
XCBDRAWABLE draw;
CARD32 mask;
CARD32 values[2];
gc = XCBGCONTEXTNew (c);
draw.window = screen-&gt;root;
mask = XCBGCForeground | XCBGCBackground;
values[0] = screen-&gt;black_pixel;
values[1] = screen-&gt;white_pixel;
XCBCreateGC (c, gc, draw, mask, values);
}
/* gc contains now the default graphic context */
</pre>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="BlackPixel">BlackPixel / BlackPixelOfScreen</a>
<p>
It is the Id of the black pixel, which is in the structure
of an <span class="code">XCBSCREEN</span>.
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBConnection *c;
XCBSCREEN *screen;
int screen_nbr;
CARD32 black_pixel = 0; /* the returned black pixel */
/* you init the connection and screen_nbr */
screen = ScreenOfDisplay (c, screen_nbr);
if (screen)
black_pixel = screen-&gt;black_pixel;
/* black_pixel contains now the value of the black pixel, or 0 if no screen is found */
</pre>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="WhitePixel">WhitePixel / WhitePixelOfScreen</a>
<p>
It is the Id of the white pixel, which is in the structure
of an <span class="code">XCBSCREEN</span>.
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBConnection *c;
XCBSCREEN *screen;
int screen_nbr;
CARD32 white_pixel = 0; /* the returned white pixel */
/* you init the connection and screen_nbr */
screen = ScreenOfDisplay (c, screen_nbr);
if (screen)
white_pixel = screen-&gt;white_pixel;
/* white_pixel contains now the value of the white pixel, or 0 if no screen is found */
</pre>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="DisplayWidth">DisplayWidth / WidthOfScreen</a>
<p>
It is the width in pixels of the screen that you want, and
which is in the structure of the corresponding
<span class="code">XCBSCREEN</span>.
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBConnection *c;
XCBSCREEN *screen;
int screen_nbr;
CARD32 width_in_pixels = 0; /* the returned width in pixels */
/* you init the connection and screen_nbr */
screen = ScreenOfDisplay (c, screen_nbr);
if (screen)
width_in_pixels = screen-&gt;width_in_pixels;
/* width_in_pixels contains now the width in pixels, or 0 if no screen is found */
</pre>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="DisplayHeight">DisplayHeight / HeightOfScreen</a>
<p>
It is the height in pixels of the screen that you want, and
which is in the structure of the corresponding
<span class="code">XCBSCREEN</span>.
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBConnection *c;
XCBSCREEN *screen;
int screen_nbr;
CARD32 height_in_pixels = 0; /* the returned height in pixels */
/* you init the connection and screen_nbr */
screen = ScreenOfDisplay (c, screen_nbr);
if (screen)
height_in_pixels = screen-&gt;height_in_pixels;
/* height_in_pixels contains now the height in pixels, or 0 if no screen is found */
</pre>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="DisplayWidthMM">DisplayWidthMM / WidthMMOfScreen</a>
<p>
It is the width in millimeters of the screen that you want, and
which is in the structure of the corresponding
<span class="code">XCBSCREEN</span>.
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBConnection *c;
XCBSCREEN *screen;
int screen_nbr;
CARD32 width_in_millimeters = 0; /* the returned width in millimeters */
/* you init the connection and screen_nbr */
screen = ScreenOfDisplay (c, screen_nbr);
if (screen)
width_in_millimeters = screen-&gt;width_in_millimeters;
/* width_in_millimeters contains now the width in millimeters, or 0 if no screen is found */
</pre>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="DisplayHeightMM">DisplayHeightMM / HeightMMOfScreen</a>
<p>
It is the height in millimeters of the screen that you want, and
which is in the structure of the corresponding
<span class="code">XCBSCREEN</span>.
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBConnection *c;
XCBSCREEN *screen;
int screen_nbr;
CARD32 height_in_millimeters = 0; /* the returned height in millimeters */
/* you init the connection and screen_nbr */
screen = ScreenOfDisplay (c, screen_nbr);
if (screen)
height_in_millimeters = screen-&gt;height_in_millimeters;
/* height_in_millimeters contains now the height in millimeters, or 0 if no screen is found */
</pre>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="DisplayPlanes">DisplayPlanes / DefaultDepth / DefaultDepthOfScreen / PlanesOfScreen</a>
<p>
It is the depth (in bits) of the root window of the
screen. You get it from the <span class="code">XCBSCREEN</span> structure.
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBConnection *c;
XCBSCREEN *screen;
int screen_nbr;
CARD8 root_depth = 0; /* the returned depth of the root window */
/* you init the connection and screen_nbr */
screen = ScreenOfDisplay (c, screen_nbr);
if (screen)
root_depth = screen-&gt;root_depth;
/* root_depth contains now the depth of the root window, or 0 if no screen is found */
</pre>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="DefaultColormap">DefaultColormap / DefaultColormapOfScreen</a>
<p>
This is the default colormap of the screen (and not the
(default) colormap of the default screen !). As usual, you
get it from the <span class="code">XCBSCREEN</span> structure:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBConnection *c;
XCBSCREEN *screen;
int screen_nbr;
XCBCOLORMAP default_colormap = { 0 }; /* the returned default colormap */
/* you init the connection and screen_nbr */
screen = ScreenOfDisplay (c, screen_nbr);
if (screen)
default_colormap = screen-&gt;default_colormap;
/* default_colormap contains now the default colormap, or a NULL colormap if no screen is found */
</pre>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="MinCmapsOfScreen"></a>MinCmapsOfScreen
<p>
You get the minimum installed colormaps in the <span class="code">XCBSCREEN</span> structure:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBConnection *c;
XCBSCREEN *screen;
int screen_nbr;
CARD16 min_installed_maps = 0; /* the returned minimum installed colormaps */
/* you init the connection and screen_nbr */
screen = ScreenOfDisplay (c, screen_nbr);
if (screen)
min_installed_maps = screen-&gt;min_installed_maps;
/* min_installed_maps contains now the minimum installed colormaps, or 0 if no screen is found */
</pre>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="MaxCmapsOfScreen"></a>MaxCmapsOfScreen
<p>
You get the maximum installed colormaps in the <span class="code">XCBSCREEN</span> structure:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBConnection *c;
XCBSCREEN *screen;
int screen_nbr;
CARD16 max_installed_maps = 0; /* the returned maximum installed colormaps */
/* you init the connection and screen_nbr */
screen = ScreenOfDisplay (c, screen_nbr);
if (screen)
max_installed_maps = screen-&gt;max_installed_maps;
/* max_installed_maps contains now the maximum installed colormaps, or 0 if no screen is found */
</pre>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="DoesSaveUnders"></a>DoesSaveUnders
<p>
You know if <span class="code">save_unders</span> is set,
by looking in the <span class="code">XCBSCREEN</span> structure:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBConnection *c;
XCBSCREEN *screen;
int screen_nbr;
BOOL save_unders = 0; /* the returned value of save_unders */
/* you init the connection and screen_nbr */
screen = ScreenOfDisplay (c, screen_nbr);
if (screen)
save_unders = screen-&gt;save_unders;
/* save_unders contains now the value of save_unders, or FALSE if no screen is found */
</pre>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="DoesBackingStore"></a>DoesBackingStore
<p>
You know the value of <span class="code">backing_stores</span>,
by looking in the <span class="code">XCBSCREEN</span> structure:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBConnection *c;
XCBSCREEN *screen;
int screen_nbr;
BYTE backing_stores = 0; /* the returned value of backing_stores */
/* you init the connection and screen_nbr */
screen = ScreenOfDisplay (c, screen_nbr);
if (screen)
backing_stores = screen-&gt;backing_stores;
/* backing_stores contains now the value of backing_stores, or FALSE if no screen is found */
</pre>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="EventMaskOfScreen"></a>EventMaskOfScreen
<p>
To get the current input masks,
you look in the <span class="code">XCBSCREEN</span> structure:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBConnection *c;
XCBSCREEN *screen;
int screen_nbr;
CARD32 current_input_masks = 0; /* the returned value of current input masks */
/* you init the connection and screen_nbr */
screen = ScreenOfDisplay (c, screen_nbr);
if (screen)
current_input_masks = screen-&gt;current_input_masks;
/* current_input_masks contains now the value of the current input masks, or FALSE if no screen is found */
</pre>
</ol>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="misc">Miscellaneous macros</a>
<ol>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="DisplayOfScreen"></a>DisplayOfScreen
<p>
in Xlib, the <span class="code">Screen</span> structure
stores its associated <span class="code">Display</span>
structure. This is not the case in the X Window protocol,
hence, it's also not the case in XCB. So you have to store
it by yourself.
</p>
<li class="subtitle"><a name="DisplayCells"></a>DisplayCells / CellsOfScreen
<p>
To get the colormap entries,
you look in the <span class="code">XCBVISUALTYPE</span>
structure, that you grab like <a class="subsection" href="#DefaultVisual">here</a>:
</p>
<pre class="code">
XCBConnection *c;
XCBVISUALTYPE *visual_type;
CARD16 colormap_entries = 0; /* the returned value of the colormap entries */
/* you init the connection and visual_type */
if (visual_type)
colormap_entries = visual_type-&gt;colormap_entries;
/* colormap_entries contains now the value of the colormap entries, or FALSE if no screen is found */
</pre>
</ol>
</ol>
</ol>
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