autocutsel 0.9.0 review

autocutsel project is a simple buffer in which any application can store text. X servers use two schemes to copy text between appl

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 290K Developer: Michael Witrant

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autocutsel project is a simple buffer in which any application can store text.

X servers use two schemes to copy text between applications. The first one (old and deprecated) is the cutbuffer. The other scheme is the selection and works differently.

There may be many selections in a single server. An application does not copy data in a selection, it "owns" it. When another application wants to retreive the content of a selection, it asks the owner.

Recent desktop applications (GNOME, KDE, ...) use two selections: the PRIMARY and the CLIPBOARD. The PRIMARY selection is used when you select some text with the mouse. You usually paste it using the middle button. The CLIPBOARD selection is used when you copy text by using, for example, the Edit/Copy menu. You may paste it using the Edit/Paste menu.

Windows VNC clients keep the Windows clipboard synchronized with the cutbuffer, but not with the selections. And since recent applications don't use the cutbuffer, the server's CLIPBOARD is never synchronized with Windows' one.

Autocutsel tracks changes in the server's cutbuffer and CLIPBOARD selection. When the CLIPBOARD is changed, it updates the cutbuffer. When the cutbuffer is changed, it owns the CLIPBOARD selection. The cutbuffer and CLIPBOARD selection are always synchronized.

Since the VNC client synchronizes the Windows' clipboard and the server's cutbuffer, all three "clipboards" are always kept synchronized. When you copy some text in Windows, the cutbuffer and the CLIPBOARD selection are updated. When you copy text on the server using either the cutbuffer or the CLIPBOARD selection, the Windows's clipboard is always updated.

Installation and Usage:

./configure
make

If you downloaded autocutsel from CVS, you first have to run ./autogen.sh to build the configure script.

If configure fails because it can't find X or Xaw libraries, you may have to install the devel packages of these libraries.

To install it (as root):

make install

To run it:

autocutsel

By default, autocutsel synchronizes the CLIPBOARD selection. You may want to use the PRIMARY selection instead, if your applications use Motif or another toolkit not using the CLIPBOARD. To do that, simply run

autocutsel -selection PRIMARY

What's New in This Release:
A bug which occurred on 64-bit systems has been fixed.
A workaround for OpenOffice.org writer has been implemented.
A compilation problem on NetBSD has been fixed.
A test suite has been added.