XCUTSEL(1)

💖 XCUTSEL(1) 💖

okay so hi bestie, welcome to xcutsel(1) from the General Commands Manual — she is literally the bridge between cut buffers and selections, and she’s here to make apps that don’t speak selection and apps that do finally get along. 💖

✨ NAME ✨

xcutsel — interchange between cut buffer and selection. that’s the name, and she ate. 💅

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

xcutsel [ -toolkitoption ...] [-selection selection] [-cutbuffer number]

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

xcutsel copies the current selection into a cut buffer, and it can also make a selection that contains the current contents of the cut buffer. she’s the middle-bestie bridge between applications that don’t support selections and those that do. 🫶

By default, xcutsel uses the selection named PRIMARY and the cut buffer CUT_BUFFER0. either one or both of those can be overridden by command line arguments or by resources. no cap. ✨

An xcutsel window has these buttons:

• quit — press this button and xcutsel exits. any selections held by xcutsel are automatically released. bye bestie. 👋
• copy PRIMARY to 0 — press this button and xcutsel copies the current selection into the cut buffer. periodt.
• copy 0 to PRIMARY — press this button and xcutsel converts the current contents of the cut buffer into the selection. iconic.

The button labels reflect the selection and cutbuffer selected by command line options or through the resource database. 💖

When the copy 0 to PRIMARY button is activated, the button will remain inverted as long as xcutsel remains the owner of the selection. this serves to remind you which client owns the current selection. note that the value of the selection remains constant; if the cutbuffer is changed, you must again activate the copy button to retrieve the new value when desired. lowkey important. 🎀

💜 OPTIONS 💜

xcutsel accepts all of the standard X Toolkit command line options as well as these:

• -selection name — specifies the name of the selection to use. the default is PRIMARY. the only supported abbreviations for this option are -select, -sel, and -s, as the standard toolkit option -selectionTimeout has a similar name. iykyk. 🌈
• -cutbuffer number — specifies the cut buffer to use. the default is cut buffer 0. slay. 🔥

🎀 X DEFAULTS 🎀

This program accepts all of the standard X Toolkit resource names and classes as well as:

• selection (class Selection) — this resource specifies the name of the selection to use. the default is PRIMARY.
• cutBuffer (class CutBuffer) — this resource specifies the number of the cut buffer to use. the default is 0.

🧚 WIDGET NAMES 🧚

The following instance names may be used when user configuration of the labels in them is desired:

• sel-cut (class Command) — this is the copy SELECTION to BUFFER button.
• cut-sel (class Command) — this is the copy BUFFER to SELECTION button.
• quit (class Command) — this is the quit button.

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• X(7)
• xclipboard(1)
• xterm(1)
• text widget documentation
• individual client documentation for how to make a selection

💀 BUGS 💀

big sigh: there is no way to change the name of the selection or the number of the cut buffer while the program is running. not me wanting hot-swap vibes and getting none. 💀

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Ralph R. Swick, DEC/MIT Project Athena — thank you king. 👑

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okay that’s the whole page, bestie 💅 footer vibe check: X Version 11 and xclipboard 1.1.5 — that’s the source/version situation, and there’s no date line here to quote, so we’re not making one up. 🫶