I wonder if there is a way to caputure all X keyboard events, blocking them from going to the window with keyboard focus?

So if I run XGrabKeyboard() no other, separate programs can get keyboard input (which is my goal)?

I decided to return to this, and found that XGrabKeyboard() really does what I want.

But when a grabbed key is pressed, how do I re-send it to the window that would have recieved the key had I not grabbed it?

Also, is it possible to use XGrabKeyboard() without having a window visible on screen? It doesn't grab the keyboard when the window isn't mapped.

Anyone?

XGrabKeyboard tells the X server "Send keyboards events ONLY to me", and, in between the XGrabKeyboard() and the XUngrabKeyboard (), the X server does not send X keyboard events to other clients. When you do the XUngrabKeyboard(), the X server goes back to sending X keyboard events to everybody who is registered for them. You don't have to forward an event to others. See man XGrabKeyboard for details.

When a window is offscreen the idea of a keyboard to be grabbed does not make sense, does it? How does a keyboard find an offscreen window?

If you really want to see all the characters, and let others see them, too, learn about X events.