Top | ![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
The X selection mechanism provides a way to transfer
arbitrary chunks of data between programs.
A selection is a essentially
a named clipboard, identified by a string interned
as a GdkAtom. By claiming ownership of a selection,
an application indicates that it will be responsible
for supplying its contents. The most common
selections are PRIMARY
and
CLIPBOARD
.
The contents of a selection can be represented in
a number of formats, called targets.
Each target is identified by an atom. A list of
all possible targets supported by the selection owner
can be retrieved by requesting the special target
TARGETS
. When a selection is
retrieved, the data is accompanied by a type
(an atom), and a format (an integer, representing
the number of bits per item).
See Properties and Atoms
for more information.
The functions in this section only contain the lowlevel
parts of the selection protocol. A considerably more
complicated implementation is needed on top of this.
GTK+ contains such an implementation in the functions
in gtkselection.h
and programmers
should use those functions instead of the ones presented
here. If you plan to implement selection handling
directly on top of the functions here, you should refer
to the X Inter-client Communication Conventions Manual
(ICCCM).