How to convert relative mouse co-ordinates to absolute co-ordinates?

montylee · 05-21-2008, 01:11 PM

I want to record and play mouse events on my Linux machine.
Basically i store all the mouse events entered by the user into a text file. For this, i am simply reading the device file: /dev/input/event1 using read() and storing the events into a text file. While playback i read() the text file and write() the events to the device file /dev/input/event1.

Here's my code:

Recording

Code:

FILE *deviceConnection,*record_file;
struct input_event myEvent;

deviceConnection = fopen(argv[1], "rw");
record_file = fopen(argv[2], "rw+");

while (1) {
	printf(".");
        // read from the device file into the input_event structure */
	fread(&myEvent, sizeof(struct input_event), 1, deviceConnection);
	// Write the events to the text file */
       fwrite(&myEvent, sizeof(struct input_event), 1, record_file);
       fflush(record_file);		
}
fclose(deviceConnection);
fclose(record_file);

Playback

Code:

FILE *record_file;
struct input_event myEvent;
char filename[128] ;
int devHandle = -1;

devHandle = open(argv[1], O_RDWR);
record_file = fopen(argv[2], "r+");

while (!feof(record_file))
{
	fread(&myEvent, sizeof(struct input_event), 1, record_file);
	if (myEvent.value != 0) {
		printf ("We are in Key Press \n");
		write(devHandle, &(myEvent), sizeof(struct input_event);
	}
}

close (devHandle);
fclose(record_file);

Now, i am able to record and play the mouse events but while playback the mouse events are played relative to the current mouse position. This is because a standard mouse supports only relative events (A mouse supports key events: EV_KEY and Relative events: EV_REL).

Note: Absolute events (EV_ABS) are supported by pointing devices like joysticks etc.

Now, i want to get absolute mouse co-ordinates so that the mouse events can be played accurately irrespective of the current mouse position.

How can i achieve this? Can i convert the relative mouse position to absolute position?

montylee · 05-22-2008, 02:14 AM

no replies

common guys help me please.
I think to solve this problem i only need to save the exact mouse pointer position at the time when recording is started. Then i can simply record the relative events as i am doing now and compute the absolute co-ordinates by adding them to the initial mouse pointer position.

The problem is how can i get the exact initial mouse co-ordinates when the recording is started...

Any ideas?