Input Events

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21.7 Input Events

The Emacs command loop reads a sequence of input events that represent keyboard or mouse activity, or system events sent to Emacs. The events for keyboard activity are characters or symbols; other events are always lists. This section describes the representation and meaning of input events in detail.

— Function: eventp object

This function returns non-nil if object is an input event or event type.
Note that any symbol might be used as an event or an event type. eventp cannot distinguish whether a symbol is intended by Lisp code to be used as an event. Instead, it distinguishes whether the symbol has actually been used in an event that has been read as input in the current Emacs session. If a symbol has not yet been so used, eventp returns nil.

Keyboard Events: Ordinary characters -- keys with symbols on them.
Function Keys: Function keys -- keys with names, not symbols.
Mouse Events: Overview of mouse events.
Click Events: Pushing and releasing a mouse button.
Drag Events: Moving the mouse before releasing the button.
Button-Down Events: A button was pushed and not yet released.
Repeat Events: Double and triple click (or drag, or down).
Motion Events: Just moving the mouse, not pushing a button.
Focus Events: Moving the mouse between frames.
Misc Events: Other events the system can generate.
Event Examples: Examples of the lists for mouse events.
Classifying Events: Finding the modifier keys in an event symbol. Event types.
Accessing Mouse: Functions to extract info from mouse events.
Accessing Scroll: Functions to get info from scroll bar events.
Strings of Events: Special considerations for putting keyboard character events in a string.