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Zach
Asked: 2020-11-01 09:29:52 +0800 CST

Cnee command does not work when triggered from shortcut

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I am using Ubuntu 20.04 and its default desktop and I can't manage to trigger a cnee macro using a keyboard shortcut.

I have recorded a simple macro with cnee and saved it in the file /tmp/recorded_macro.xnl. If I use the following linux command in a terminal, the macro is played correctly (my macro simply types "test" in the terminal):

cnee --replay -sp 0 -f /tmp/recorded_macro.xnl

Now I would like to use a keyboard shortcut to start this same macro when the focused window is a text editor (e.g., emacs, visual studio, gnome-terminal, ...). The aim is to write "test" in the focused window. To that end, I created a keyboard shortcut which triggers the exact same cnee command and tried it when the focus is on several text editors. Unfortunately, nothing is written in the editor when I use the shortcut.

To check that the shortcut is correctly triggered, I created the following script and associated it with another keyboard shortcut:

#!/bin/bash
cnee --replay -sp 0 -f /tmp/recorded_macro.xnl
touch /home/user/test

If I execute the script in a terminal, it works ("test" is written in the terminal and the file /home/user/test is created).

However, when I use the shortcut when the focus is in a text editor, the file "test" is created (so the script is executed) but no text is written in the text editor.

Do you know why and how I could fix this?

shortcuts desktop-recording

1 Answers

  1. To trigger the cnee command, I was using the shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+H.

    Since I was using the replay speed -sp 0, the keys 't', 'e', 's' and 't' were "pressed" instantly.

    It was so fast that the keys Ctrl and Shiftof the shortcut were still pressed. Consequently, the editor instead of writting "test" was interpreting Ctrl+Shift+t, Ctrl+Shift+e, Ctrl+Shift+s and Ctrl+Shift+t.

    A solution is to add a small delay before executing the cnee replay by adding -t 1. It is not totally satisfying for me, since executing the macro several times in a row will make me wait a little each time but it works.

    Thanks to @WU-TANG for the help.

    EDIT: One workaround would be that the shortcut triggers a bash script which waits until Ctrl and Shift are not pressed anymore to execute the cnee command. I don't yet know how to do that in bash however.

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