tk4.2 User Commands - clipboard






NAME

     clipboard - Manipulate Tk clipboard


SYNOPSIS

     clipboard option ?arg arg ...?





DESCRIPTION

     This command provides a Tcl interface to the  Tk  clipboard,
     which  stores  data  for later retrieval using the selection
     mechanism.  In order to copy data into the clipboard,  clip-
     board clear must be called, followed by a sequence of one or
     more calls to clipboard append.  To ensure  that  the  clip-
     board is updated atomically, all appends should be completed
     before returning to the event loop.

     The first argument to clipboard determines the format of the
     rest  of the arguments and the behavior of the command.  The
     following forms are currently supported:

     clipboard clear ?-displayof window?
          Claims ownership of the clipboard on  window's  display
          and  removes any previous contents.  Window defaults to
          ``.''.  Returns an empty string.


type? ?--? data

     clipboard append ?-displayof window? ?- format  format?  ? -
           type
          Appends data to the clipboard on  window's  display  in
          the form given by type with the representation given by
          format  and  claims  ownership  of  the  clipboard   on
          window's display.

          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 format argument specifies the  representation  that
          should be used to transmit the selection to the reques-
          ter (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.  If format is
          ATOM, then the data 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,  data is divided into
          fields  separated by white space and each field is con-
          verted to a 32-bit integer; an  array  of  integers  is
          transmitted  to  the  selection  requester.   Note that
          strings passed to  clipboard  append  are  concatenated
          before  conversion,  so  the  caller  must take care to
          ensure appropriate spacing  across  string  boundaries.
          All  items appended to the clipboard with the same type
          must have the same format.

          The format argument is needed  only  for  compatibility
          with clipboard requesters that don't use Tk.  If the Tk
          toolkit is being used to retrieve the CLIPBOARD  selec-
          tion  then  the  value is converted back to a string at
          the requesting end, so format is irrelevant.

          A -- argument may be  specified  to  mark  the  end  of
          options:   the  next  argument  will  always be used as
          data.  This feature may be convenient if, for  example,
          data starts with a -.



KEYWORDS

     clear, format, clipboard, append, selection, type