Volume 6A: Motif Programming Manual

18 The Clipboard

This chapter describes a way for the application to interact with other applications. Data is placed on the clipboard,

where it can be accessed by other windows on the desktop regardless of the applications with which they are

associated.

Imagine a group of people in a room; the only way for them to communicate is by writing messages on paper, placing

the paper on a clipboard, and passing the clipboard around. A single person acts as the moderator and holds the

clipboard at all times. If someone wants to post a note, she writes the message on a slip of paper and hands the

message to the moderator. The note is now available for anyone to read. However, those who read the message do not

remove the message from the clipboard; rather, they copy what was written. There is no guarantee that anyone will

want to look at any particular message, but it is there nonetheless and will remain there until someone writes a new

one.

This scenario is the concept behind the Motif clipboard: a data transfer mechanism that enables widgets to make data

available for other widgets, including those in separate applications. Information of any size or type can be passed

using the clipboard interface. The most common example of this data transfer model is cut and paste, a method by

which the user can move or copy text between windows. Here, the user interacts with a Text widget that contains

some text that she wishes to transfer to another Text widget. The user first selects the text she wants to transfer ...