Listening for keypress in the background

[Mathias Dahl]

Mathias Dahl <brakjoller at gmail.com> writes:

> Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> writes:
>
>>> How can I make it listen for a certain keypress (say, Windows-key +
>>> space) in a controlled fashion even when it is not the program having
>>> focus?
>>> 
>>> I need to do this running under GNOME in Mandrake GN/Linux 10.
>>
>> Search Google for "python keylogger".
>
> Thanks, good idea! The relevant pages I found only link to
> Windows-specific keyloggers though.
>
> I just got another idea on a solution for my main problem (invoking my
> sleeping app) and that would be to let my window manager execute a
> small "invoker" program that would communicate with the sleeping
> app. The question is, which is the easiest way to communicate with a
> running Python program? Signals? TCP/IP (not really, right?) Pipes?

I solved it using named pipes (mkfifo, open and read) plus a simple
echo x > pipe to invoke.