wm independent shortcut capture

[Martin Man <mman martinman net>]

Hello All,

[warning: a bit longer]

I need a strategical advice. I'm the author of iswitchwin
(http://martinman.net/software/iswitchwin.html) a window switcher that
allows you to activate windows by typing part of their title.

I want the iswitchwin to remain window manager independent, so that
anyone, KDE, Gnome, ..., can use it to control window manager (read: I
want to make iswitchwin very fast, but not part of metacity).

The key usability point is that iswitchwin has to be activated via
keyboard shortcut, which is now done via run_command_N feature of metacity.

This however spawns new iswitchwin process anytime user presses hotkey,
which of course is very slow (compared to let's say "Alt-Tab" keypress).

So right now, I'd like to keep only one instance of iswitchwin process
running, possibly sitting in a notification area, and I'd like to
activate it (show switching window) on a keypress.

Anyone can point me in a right direction? I'd like to make the code as
modern and platform independent as possible (using unix sockets and
exteral hotkey activated app to bring up iswitchwin window does not seem
like a slick-enough idea to me)


thanx,
Martin

P.S. cc me on the replies