Learning GNU Emacs, 3rd Edition

Emacs and the Clipboard

Emacs 21 plays well with the clipboard, though it still may not do what you want it to in some cases. Let's dig into this in a little more detail.

Placing Text on the Clipboard

By default, text that you cut or copy using icons on the toolbar or options on the Edit menu is placed on the clipboard and is accessible to other applications.

Unfortunately, Emacs diverges by platform on this issue. Normally we save platform-specific issues for Chapter 13, but cutting and pasting is such a vital operation that we must describe the differences here.

On Windows and Mac OS X (but not on Linux) any text you cut or copy using C-w or M-w is also copied to the clipboard.

On Windows and Mac OS X, simply selecting text with the mouse places it on the clipboard. (This doesn't work on Linux.). Most applications require you to highlight text, then issue a copy command. Emacs doesn't. Table 2-6 shows how this works on various platforms.

Table 2-6. Selecting text with the mouse

	Linux	Windows	Mac OS X graphical	Mac OS X terminal
Sends to clipboard?	no	yes	yes	no[4]
Sends to kill ring?	yes	yes	yes	no
[4] You can make this happen if you highlight the text and then press xxxMacSymxxx-C. Simply highlighting the text doesn't copy it to the clipboard.

To send text to the clipboard on Linux, select it with the mouse (or mark it as a region), then click on the cut or copy toolbar icon or menu option. You can also use the clipboard-specific commands listed in Table 2-7 on any ...