Automatically take screenshot of x server if window contents change - c

Question

I am searching for a way to automatically take a screenshot of my X server if a window is created or the contents of a windows have changed.
I am currently achieving this by listening to X11 events, but not all changes are reported.

Answer 1

Look at XDamageNotifyEvent, XDamageQueryExtension, XDamageCreate, XDamageSubtract from the Damage extension. This extension is used to track changing window contents.
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/XDamage
A good source of sample code would be anything that makes thumbnails of windows. Also, any compositing window manager (Compiz, some flavors of metacity, etc.) would contain damage-tracking code.
Without the extension, you basically have to poll (update window contents in a timeout).

Answer 2

I know this post is quite dead. And yet, the documentation of X11 is terrible, and it took me a long time to get XDamage working in any regard. So here is an example that will print a line to the console every time the root X11 window changes, based on the documentation mentioned in Havoc's post, and loosely based on this link:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <X11/extensions/Xdamage.h>
#include <X11/Xlib.h>
#include <signal.h>
int endnow = 0;
void cleanup(int SIGNUM){
endnow = 1;
}
int main(){
Display *display;
display = XOpenDisplay(":0");
if(!display){
perror("could not open display");
exit(1);
}
Window root = DefaultRootWindow(display);
int damage_event, damage_error, test;
//this line is necessary to initialize things
test = XDamageQueryExtension(display, &damage_event, &damage_error);
/*The "event" output is apparently the integer that appears in the
Xevent.type field when XNextEvent returns an XDamage event */
printf("test = %d, event = %d, error = %d\n",test,damage_event, damage_error);
//This is the handler for the XDamage interface
//See the XDamage documentation for more damage report levels
// http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/XDamage
Damage damage = XDamageCreate(display, root, XDamageReportNonEmpty);
signal(SIGINT,cleanup);
// XCloseDisplay(display);
while(endnow == 0){
XEvent event;
XNextEvent(display,&event);
printf("event.type = %d\n",event.type);
//this line resets the XDamage handler
XDamageSubtract(display,damage,None,None);
}
XCloseDisplay(display);
printf("done\n");
exit(0);
}
Naturally, if you run this from a console on the same screen as your display :0, every line it prints it will activate itself, and be kinda unstable. But it is a good demonstration if you run it from an ssh terminal on another computer.