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 (via the -selection CLIPBOARD option).  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.

       clipboard append ?-displayof window? ?-format format? ?-type type? ?--? data
              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 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 do not 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 -.

       clipboard get ?-displayof window? ?-type type?
              Retrieve data from the clipboard on window's display.  Window defaults to “.”.  Type specifies the
              form  in  which the data is to be returned and should be an atom name such as STRING or FILE_NAME.
              Type defaults to STRING.  This command is equivalent to “selection get -selection CLIPBOARD”.

              Note that on modern X11 systems, the most useful type to retrieve for transferred strings  is  not
              STRING, but rather UTF8_STRING.

EXAMPLES

       Get the current contents of the clipboard.
              if {[catch {clipboard get} contents]} {
                  # There were no clipboard contents at all
              }

       Set the clipboard to contain a fixed string.
              clipboard clear
              clipboard append "some fixed string"

       You  can  put  custom  data  into  the  clipboard by using a custom -type option. This is not necessarily
       portable, but can be very useful. The method of passing Tcl scripts this way is effective, but should  be
       mixed with safe interpreters in production code.
              # This is a very simple canvas serializer;
              # it produces a script that recreates the item(s) when executed
              proc getItemConfig {canvas tag} {
                 set script {}
                 foreach item [$canvas find withtag $tag] {
                    append script {$canvas create } [$canvas type $item]
                    append script { } [$canvas coords $item] { }
                    foreach config [$canvas itemconf $item] {
                       lassign $config name - - - value
                       append script [list $name $value] { }
                    }
                    append script \n
                 }
                 return [string trim $script]
              }

              # Set up a binding on a canvas to cut and paste an item
              set c [canvas .c]
              pack $c
              $c create text 150 30 -text "cut and paste me"
              bind $c <<Cut>> {
                 clipboard clear
                 clipboard append -type TkCanvasItem \
                       [getItemConfig %W current]
                 # Delete because this is cut, not copy.
                 %W delete current
              }
              bind $c <<Paste>> {
                 catch {
                    set canvas %W
                    eval [clipboard get -type TkCanvasItem]
                 }
              }

SEE ALSO

       interp(3tcl), selection(3tk)

KEYWORDS

       clear, format, clipboard, append, selection, type