How to prevent an X Window from receiving user input?

Question

I would like to create some windows on a linux desktop for simple layout purposes. I need to avoid user input going to these windows (and I suppose avoiding the windows from gai

Answer 1

A window indicates whether it wants to receive keyboard input by setting the KeyPress and KeyRelease bits in its event mask. If you do not want your window to receive keyboard input, simply do not set those event in CreateWindow()'s event mask. See http://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.7/doc/xproto/x11protocol.html#requests:ChangeWindowAttributes for more information.

Additionally, you should also set the input focus hints for your window to "NoFocus", as described in section 4.1.7 of ICCCM: http://tronche.com/gui/x/icccm/sec-4.html#s-4.1.7

If you want to fiddle with other applications' windows, you should be able to change their attributes and hints, although this may result in undesirable behavior and/or side effects.