--------------------------------------------------------------------------

sendkey 0.9

A sendkey daemon for Linux OS

Copyright (C) 1998 Luca Montecchiani <m.luca@usa.net>

Version 0.9, 22 February 1998

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Introduction

Since I started interesting on speech recognition I didn't find any 
applications that allow me to substitute the keyboard with my vocal
commands, so I've decided to make this one.

What is sendkey

Sendkey is a daemon that put in the keyboard queue of the active 
console all received characters from a special fifo file.
This kind of solutions don't need you to modify your kernel source
and it can be used from all applications that can write on a file.

Possibly uses

   * make of Linux a little bit more extensible than now
   * IRC Remote control
   * Vocal recognition software
   * Disabled people access
   * Automatic control over any application ( slides-how , auto-login, etc... )
   * More and more use not listed here

Goal

   * Contribute to the Linux community
   * Contribute to the Voice recognition software developers
   * Contribute for disabled people

Installations

For a quick installation type the following at your command prompt:
#make bin
#make test
#make demo

Notes

   * The author is not responsible for any kind of damage derived from use
     or abuse of this software (see GPL license term)
   * WARNING that the fifo file passed as an argument is always deleted !!
   * WARNING play attention on which command are you sending to sendkey !!!
   * REMEMBER that sendkey will always put on keyboard queue all you write
     on the fifo file !! Is not difficult to make DISASTER ( rm -r / ) !!!
   * Sendkey DON'T WORK on Xwindows because of the different keyboard use
   * See the KEYBOARD doc to know other way to implement this kind of service
   * The latest version of sendkey can be found on
     http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Vista/2964/linux.html
   * If you have some comments, suggestions or bug report, please email me !
   * More useful technical notes can be found in the source code.

Todo ( in priority order )

   * Xwindows "porting"
	   * table ASCII->scancode
	   * table <KEYS>->scancode
   * make it a single instance program (like gpm)
   * make a -k option to kill sendkey (like gpm -k)
   * Build an RPM package distribution

Flow chart diagram
                                      +----------+
                                      | Keyboard |
                                      +----+-----+
              SOFTWARE REQUEST             | HARDWARE REQUEST
                 *******************       |
                 *                 *       |
                 *                 v       v
       ******************      +---+-------+--+
       * sendkey daemon *      | Linux Kernel |
       ******************      +-------+------+
                 ^                     |
                 *                     |
                 *                     v
       ********************    +-------+-------+
       * User application *    | current linux |
       * writing to fifo  *    | console       |
       ********************    +---------------+

Thanks

   * Linus Torvalds for Linux
   * Tuukka Toivonen for Timidity (playing music during development)
   * usa.net for give me a free e-mail
   * geocities for give me a free home page
