XCB(1)XCB(1)NAMExcb - X Cut Buffers - Pigeon holes for your cut and paste selections.
SYNOPSISxcb [Xt option] [-l layout] [-n count] [-p|-s|-S list] [-r count]
DESCRIPTION
Xcb provides easy access to the cut buffers built into every X server.
It allows the buffers to be manipulated either via the command line, or
with the mouse in a point and click manner. The buffers can be used as
holding pens to store and retrieve arbitrary data fragments. Any num‐
ber of cut buffers may be created, so any number of different pieces of
data can be saved and recalled later. By default, 8 cut buffers are
created. The program is designed primarily for use with textual data.
Xcb has two modes of operation. Normally xcb provides an array of win‐
dows on your display, one per cut buffer, tiled horizontally, verti‐
cally, or in some user specified layout. Each window displays the con‐
tents of its respective cut buffer. Data can be cut from and pasted to
the windows in a similar manner to xterm. The buffers can also be
rotated.
In task mode, xcb lets you access the cut buffers from the command
line. Cut buffers can be loaded from stdin, copied or concatenated to
stdout, loaded using the current PRIMARY selection, or rotated an arbi‐
trary number of positions. In this mode of operation, xcb performs the
requested task and then exits. It does not create any windows and has
no interaction with the mouse or keyboard.
OPTIONS
Xcb supports the full set of X Toolkit Intrinsics options, as well as
those listed below. Xcb options can appear in any order. The presence
of the -p, -r, -s or -S options causes xcb to execute in task mode,
described above.
-l layout
This option controls the geometry arrangement of xcb's subwin‐
dows. It is the command line equivalent of the .layout
resource, described below.
-n count
Create count cut buffers. Count can be any integer greater than
zero. This option is the command line equivalent of the
.bufferCount resource, described below.
-u Use utf-8 instead of the current locale settings when executing
in task mode and doing I/O.
-V Print the xcb release version number and exit immediately.
-p list
Print the contents of the listed buffer(s) on stdout. The
buffered data is printed exactly as it is stored in the server.
Selecting two or more buffers has the effect of concatenating
the data on stdout. The cut buffers are numbered from 0...
onwards. The list can be either a single digit, a comma sepa‐
rated list of digits, a range of the form m-n, or some combina‐
tion of lists and ranges. The buffers are printed in listed
order, so repeated numbers in the list can be used to duplicate
buffer contents.
-r count
Rotate the buffers by count positions. Count can be any inte‐
ger, positive or negative. This option may be used in conjunc‐
tion with the -n count option to rotate a specific number of
buffers. If the -n option is not used, xcb will rotate the num‐
ber of buffers given by the .bufferCount resource.
-s list
Store the data from stdin in the listed buffer(s). If the list
refers to two or more buffers, the input data is duplicated in
each buffer. Refer to the -p option for the definition of a
list.
-S list
Store the current PRIMARY selection data in the listed buf‐
fer(s). The data is converted to a string representation. If
the list refers to two or more buffers, the PRIMARY selection is
duplicated in each buffer. Refer to the -p option for the defi‐
nition of a list. Under the -S option xcb waits for the nomi‐
nated cut buffer's contents to change before exiting. If no
change is detected within 3 seconds, xcb exits with a non-zero
return code.
WIDGETS and RESOURCES
The xcb widget hierarchy consists of a collection of custom buffer wid‐
gets, one per cut buffer. In the Athena version of the program, these
buffer widgets are all contained within a single Athena form widget.
In the Motif version of the program, they are each enclosed by Motif
frame widgets, and the frame widgets are all contained within a single
Motif RowColumn widget.
The names of the buffer widgets are "buffer0", "buffer1", "buffer2",
.... etc., and their class name is "Buffer". Each buffer widget sup‐
ports all the standard core widget resources, plus the .foreground and
.fontSet resources.
Application wide resources are as follows:
.bufferCount (default value 8)
This is the number of buffer widgets to create.
Any number of widgets (greater than zero) can be created.
.layout (default value "h")
Only the first character of the resource value is significant.
This is the geometry arrangement to apply in the container widget.
The layout can be "h" (horizontal), "v" (vertical), or some
other value to disable the inbuilt geometry code and specify
the layout via your X resources. An example is provided in the
application default resources file.
EVENTS and TRANSLATIONS
Xcb's input semantics are coded into a Toolkit translation table. The
default bindings have been chosen to conform with the default configu‐
ration of other cut and paste clients, such as xterm. The bindings may
be altered or overridden according to your needs. The actions func‐
tions provided by xcb are:-
cut() causes the contents of the chosen cut buffer to become
the PRIMARY selection. The window contents, if any,
are highlighted, and can then be pasted into other
cut buffers or applications.
paste() causes the value of the PRIMARY selection to be
converted into text and pasted into the chosen cut
buffer, overwriting any previous buffer contents.
If no PRIMARY selection is present, xcb pastes
the contents of cut buffer zero into the chosen buffer.
clear() clears the chosen cut buffer.
rotate(NN) rotates the cut buffers by NN positions. NN may
be any positive or negative number.
refresh() causes the cut buffer window to be cleared and redrawn.
selreq() this action function handles paste requests
from other clients, or other xcb windows.
It should always be bound to SelectionRequest events.
selclear() this action function responds to the loss of
ownership of the PRIMARY selection property.
It should always be bound to SelectionClear events.
quit() causes xcb to terminate.
The default bindings are as follows:-
<Btn1Down>: cut() \n\
Shift <Btn2Down>: clear() \n\
<Btn2Down>: paste() \n\
Shift <Btn3Down>: rotate(-1) \n\
<Btn3Down>: rotate(1) \n\
<Key>Left: rotate(-1) \n\
<Key>Right: rotate(1) \n\
<Key>Up: rotate(-1) \n\
<Key>Down: rotate(1) \n\
<Key>q: quit() \n\
<SelReq>: selreq() \n\
<SelClr>: selclear()EXAMPLES
The following are some examples of xcb task mode usage:-
xcb-s 0-7 < /dev/null
This clears the first 8 cut buffers in your server.
echo "G'day." | xcb-display bigears:0.0 -s 1,3,5,7
This loads the string "G'day." into four of the cut buffers on the dis‐
play "bigears".
xsendevent -win buffer5 '<Btn1Down>'
This uses the program xsendevent to send a synthetic mouse click event
to an xcb subwindow, thereby making that window the owner of the PRI‐
MARY selection.
ls `xcb -p 2,3`
This produces a listing of all the files named in cut buffers 2 and 3.
xcb-p 0-7 | xcb-s 0
This concatenates the values in the first 8 cut buffers, and places the
result back in cut buffer zero.
xcb-S 0 && xcb-p 0
The first command copies the current PRIMARY selection into the first
cut buffer. If the copy succeeds, then the second command prints that
data on stdout.
for i in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
do
xcb-p $i > $HOME/.xcb/$i
done
for i in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
do
xcb-s $i < $HOME/.xcb/$i
done
This first loop saves the contents of each of the cut buffers in a sep‐
arate file under your home directory. The second loop restores the cut
buffer contents from those files. When placed in your .logout and
.login scripts respectively, the commands are a simple method of pre‐
serving your cut buffers across login sessions.
function g {
echo "$1\\c" | xcb-s 7
grep "$@"
}
function vg {
vi +/`xcb -p 7` "$@"
}
These two shell functions exemplify a simple mechanism for saving and
reusing regular expressions. The first function saves the regex used
for grep-ing into cut buffer 7. The second function reuses the most
recent grep regex as a search command in vi. There is considerable
scope for expanding and improving these ideas.
SEE ALSOxterm(1), xcutsel(1), xclipboard(1), xprop(1)
Athena Widget Set - C Language Interface
Motif Programmers Reference Guide
AUTHORS
Current Maintainer (I18n version)
Marc Lehmann
E-mail: pcg@goof.com
Original Author
Farrell McKay
E-mail: Farrell.McKay@mpx.com.au
XView modifications provided by Danny Vanderryn
E-mail: dvanderr@us.oracle.com
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 1992,1993,1994 by Farrell McKay.
Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its
documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, pro‐
vided that the above copyright notice appears in all copies and that
both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in sup‐
porting documentation. This software is provided "as is" without
express or implied warranty.
BUGS :-)
Xlib's underlying protocol for moving selection data between client and
server can sometimes be slow, depending on the amount of data involved.
Do not expect fast performance if your selections are big or you want
to store big files in your cut buffers! ("big" means, say, over 10k
bytes - but your mileage may vary).
X Version 11 Oct 6 1994 XCB(1)
