ARPUS/ce, Version 2.6.2 (03/10/05) (SCCS 1.5) _______________________________________________________________________________ Concept: paste buffers DESCRIPTION: A paste buffer is a temporary storage area for data which is in transit from an area in one file to a different location in the same file or a different file. Ce supports three types of paste buffers. 'X' PASTE BUFFERS: These buffers are implemented using the X selection mechanism for cutting and pasting data. The 'X' standard defines several paste buffer selection names. Ce supports these, plus allows the user to define paste buffers with arbitrary names. 'X' paste buffers can be used to copy and paste data between any two Ce windows displayed on the screen. This works even if the Ce windows are running on different machines as long as they are displaying to the same machine. When a Ce session executes an 'xc', 'xd', or 'rec' command, the data is stored internally by that window. When data from an 'X' paste buffer is requested by another window with the 'xp' or 'cmdf' commands, the owning window sends the data to the requesting window using the X server as an intermediary. To copy and paste between Ce and other applications, it is necessary to use the paste buffer names that these applications use. On Sun workstations, where non-Ce applications use the technique of highlighting an area and then pressing the copy key, the paste buffer name is "CLIPBOARD" which happens to be the name used for the Ce default paste buffer (That is, using 'xc' or 'xp' with no parameters). As the key definition for the keys marked "Copy" and "Paste" are normally 'xc' and 'xp', copy and paste to Sun applications "just works." On workstations running operating systems such as AIX and HP/UX, the non-Ce copy technique is to press mouse button 1 and drag to highlight an area. Releasing mouse button 1 places the data in the "XA_PRIMARY" paste buffer. Pressing mouse button 2 pastes data in "XA_PRIMARY" into a window. Ce knows this paste buffer by the name "X". Thus if in Ce, an region is marked and copied with the command "xc X", it can then be pasted in an XTERM or some other application. Pasting from paste buffer "X" in a Ce session will paste from data copied from an XTERM or some other "X" application. The seldom used "XA_SECONDARY" paste buffer is known as "X2" . When a Ce session ends, data in paste buffers owned by the Ce session is written out to files in the paste buffer directory. This defaults to ~/.CePaste. The way 'xp' works is to first check to see if an X selection exists for the paste buffer it is interested in and then to check the paste buffer directory if there was no X selection. Thus, it is possible to do a copy in one window, close the window, and paste the data in a different window. This is only guaranteed to work within a single machine. If Ce sessions are running on several machines all displaying to the same place, data saved in the paste buffer directory on one machine will not be seen on other machines unless they happen to use the same paste buffer directory via NFS. Note that the special paste buffer names BangIn, BangOut, and BangErr always go to the paste buffer directory directly. These names are used by the '!' (bang) command to pass data to and from programs. FILE PASTE BUFFERS: File paste buffers are created with 'xc -f <path>', 'xd -f <path>' and 'rec <path>' commands. They are normal files. Path can be a full path name or a relative path name. Relative path names are taken from the current working directory of the current Ce session. For ceterm, this is the working directory shown by a pwd command in the "Command: " window. Any file can be pasted to a Ce window with 'xp -f <path>'. LOCAL PASTE BUFFERS: Local Paste buffers are local to the Ce session. They cannot be pasted in other windows. They are created with 'xc -l [name]' and 'xd -l [name]' commands. They are pasted using normal 'xp' command syntax. These paste buffers are not saved out to the paste buffer directory when a Ce session terminates as are 'X' paste buffers. They are useful for data which is being cut with the intention of throwing it away. Several Ce sessions can each do a copy or cut to a local paste buffer with the same name. Each session will maintain its own copy. Using the same name in a local and non-local paste buffer may cause confusion since the windows which own a local copy will use their local copy in preference to the global copy; RELATED HELP FILES: ! (bang ) cmdf (Command File) rec (Record) xc (Copy ) xd (Cut ) xp (Paste) xl (Copy Literal) regionsCon (region description) support (customer support) _______________________________________________________________________________ Copyright (c) 1994, Robert Styma Consulting. All rights reserved.