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 non-nil 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.

• 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.