How can I insert text into another application?

Question

To scratch a personal itch, I'm writing something like a cross between a character map and an on-screen keyboard. When the user selects a character, I'd like to insert it into another application, specifically, the application that would next receive focus if my application were closed. Is there any way to do this? Right now, I work around it by just putting the character into the clipboard and terminating, leaving the user to hit paste in the other application, but usage would be far more streamlined if I could just insert the text programmatically.

I'm doing this in GTK and expect to run it only on Linux. But cross-platform solutions are also appreciated, and if GTK can't do it but some other toolkit can, I'll gladly switch.

Answer 1

This sounds like you should use libwnck, which is a GTK-related library that lets you manipulate windows on the desktop. The documentation is a little sparse, but the function wnck_screen_get_previously_active_window() seems promising.

From a WnckWindow you can get an X window ID, and perhaps from there you can use the X libraries to send a paste message (or even send it a "Ctrl-V" keypress event), perhaps with XSendEvent().

Very good question, by the way. I wish I could answer it more knowledgeably.