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selection \- Manipulate the X selection
selection option ?arg arg ...?
This command provides a Tcl interface to the X selection mechanism and
implements the full selection functionality described in the
X Inter-Client Communication Conventions Manual (ICCCM), except that it
supports only the primary selection.
The first argument to selection determines the format of the
rest of the arguments and the behavior of the command. The following
forms are currently supported:
- selection :clear window
-
If there is a selection anywhere on window's display, clear it
so that no window owns the selection anymore. Returns an empty string.
- selection :get ?type?
-
Retrieves the value
of the primary selection and returns it as a result.
Type specifies the form in which the selection is to be
returned (the desired "target" for conversion, in ICCCM
terminology), and should be an
atom name such as STRING or FILE_NAME; see the Inter-Client
Communication Conventions Manual for complete details.
Type defaults to STRING. The selection :owner may choose to
return the selection in any of several different representation
formats, such as STRING, ATOM, INTEGER, etc. (this format is
different than the selection type; see the ICCCM for all the
confusing details). If the selection is returned in
a non-string format, such as INTEGER or ATOM, the selection
command converts it to string format as a collection of fields
separated by spaces: atoms are converted to their
textual names, and anything else is converted to hexadecimal
integers.
- selection :handle window command ?type? ?format?
-
Creates a handler for selection requests, such that command will
be executed whenever the primary selection is
owned by window and someone attempts to retrieve it in the form
given by type (e.g. type is specified in the selection :get
command). Type defaults to STRING.
If command is an empty string then any existing handler for
window and type is removed.
When the selection is requested and window is the selection :owner
and type is the requested type, command will be executed
as a Tcl command with two additional numbers appended to it
(with space separators). The two additional numbers
are offset and maxBytes: offset specifies a starting
character position in the selection and maxBytes gives the maximum
number of bytes to retrieve. The command should return a value consisting
of at most maxBytes of the selection, starting at position
offset. For very large selections (larger than maxBytes)
the selection will be retrieved using several invocations of command
with increasing offset values. If command returns a string
whose length is less than maxBytes, the return value is assumed to
include all of the remainder of the selection; if the length of
command's result is equal to maxBytes then
command will be invoked again, until it eventually
returns a result shorter than maxBytes. The value of maxBytes
will always be relatively large (thousands of bytes).
If command returns an error then the selection retrieval is rejected
just as if the selection didn't exist at all.
The format argument specifies the representation that should be
used to transmit the selection to the requester (the second column of
Table 2 of the ICCCM), and defaults to STRING. If format is
STRING, the selection is transmitted as 8-bit ASCII characters (i.e.
just in the form returned by command). If format is
ATOM, then the return value from command is divided into fields
separated by white space; each field is converted to its atom value,
and the 32-bit atom value is transmitted instead of the atom name.
For any other format, the return value from command is
divided into fields separated by white space and each field is
converted to a 32-bit integer; an array of integers is transmitted
to the selection requester.
The format argument is needed only for compatibility with
selection requesters that don't use Tk. If the Tk toolkit is being
used to retrieve the selection then the value is converted back to
a string at the requesting end, so format is
irrelevant.
.RE
- selection :own ?window? ?command?
-
If window is specified, then it becomes the new selection :owner
and the command returns an empty string as result.
The existing owner, if any, is notified that it has lost the selection.
If command is specified, it is a Tcl script to execute when
some other window claims ownership of the selection away from
window.
If neither window nor command is specified then
the command returns the path name of the window in this application
that owns the selection, or an empty string if no window in this
application owns the selection.
clear, format, handler, ICCCM, own, selection, target, type
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