clipboard(n) Tk (4.0) clipboard(n)
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NAME
clipboard - Manipulate Tk clipboard
SYNOPSIS
clipboard option ?arg arg ...?
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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,
clipboard clear must be called, followed by a sequence of
one or more calls to clipboard append. To ensure that the
clipboard 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
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. 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
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clipboard(n) Tk (4.0) clipboard(n)
space and each field is converted 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
selection 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
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