Emacs network keyboard

Question

I would like to access Emacs on my computer using my android phone. Output would be Emacspeak server on my phone.

What would be the best way to stream keyboard events from phone to Emacs?

Maybe you can do something with Emacs buffers and elisp? And ignore one direction of the channel? You could also be clearer with the question, I don't quite get it. Where will you type? On the phone or on the computer? Will you look at any screen or just rely on sound? Are you blind and using speech as a help? — Prof. Falken, Jan 25 '12 at 16:13
@AmigableClarkKant - Thank you for comment :) I'm not sure how to do it with elisp... Could you elaborate? Real problem is that I cannot find in emacs stream for keyboard. Closest thing to it is in C source, in keyboard.c, but again cannot find easy way to stream that. I would type on my phone, that would be sent to computer, and emacspeak would be sent to my phone, to be synthesized. I'm not blind, but I'm exploring using this for wearable computing. — stralep, Jan 25 '12 at 17:43

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 20 '12 at 09:09

3

It depends on what you would like to do. I sometimes run Emacs inside an SSH terminal on my phone. This, of course, means that it is displayed on the phone rather than on the computer screen.

answered Jan 20 '12 at 09:09

Lindydancer

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is there any way to make this communication one-way, just to stream keyboard events, without sending terminal drawing in opposite direction? – stralep Jan 20 '12 at 12:56
Not any existing tools, that I know of. I guess the trick is to get the events into Emacs, which probably is very platform-specific. However, if that would exist, then you could use the keyboard of the ssh client as input device by writing a simple command-line tool... – Lindydancer Jan 20 '12 at 13:05

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 26 '12 at 00:32

If you want one way communication, in my opinion you have two options, both related to emacsclient. Start emacs on your PC in TCP server mode, then...

either

Figure out the emacsclient protocol, and write your own program which to Emacs looks like an emacsclient, but actually is an Android program.

or

Run emacsclient on the Android, and give the --eval option. This will make Emacs run elisp functions, and you can make it whatever you want on the Emacs side. (This will only work if your Android can run emacsclient. I don't know if that will involve port to a Java app + NDK or if you can get emacsclient on a rooted phone.)

Emacs network keyboard

2 Answers2