Lugaru's Epsilon
Programmer's
Editor 14.04

Context:
Epsilon User's Manual and Reference
   Commands by Topic
      . . .
      Moving Around
         Simple Movement Commands
         Moving in Larger Units
         Searching
         . . .
         Comparing Many Files
      Changing Text
         Inserting and Deleting
         Killing Text
         Clipboard Access
         Rectangle Commands
         Capitalization
         . . .
      Language Modes
         Asm Mode
         Batch Mode
         C Mode
         . . .
         Visual Basic Mode
      . . .

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Killing Text  Commands by Topic   Rectangle Commands


Epsilon User's Manual and Reference > Commands by Topic > Changing Text >

Clipboard Access

In Windows, Epsilon's killing commands interact with the Windows clipboard. Similarly, Epsilon for Unix interacts with the X11 clipboard when running as an X program. You can kill text in Epsilon and paste it into another application, or copy text from an application and bring it into Epsilon with the yank command.

All commands that put text on the kill ring will also try to copy the text to the clipboard, if the variable clipboard-access is non-zero. You can copy the current region to the clipboard without putting it on the kill ring using the command copy-to-clipboard.

The yank command copies new text from the clipboard to the top of the kill ring. It does this only when the clipboard's contents have changed since the last time Epsilon accessed it, the clipboard contains text, and clipboard-access is non-zero. Epsilon looks at the size of the clipboard to determine if the text on it is new, so it may not always notice new text. You can force Epsilon to retrieve text from the clipboard by using the insert-clipboard command, which inserts the text on the clipboard at point in the current buffer.

If you prefer to have Epsilon ignore the clipboard except when you explicitly tell it otherwise, set clipboard-access to zero. You can still use the commands copy-to-clipboard and insert-clipboard to work with the clipboard. Unlike the transparent clipboard support provided by clipboard-access, these commands will report any errors that occur while trying to access the clipboard. If transparent clipboard support cannot access the clipboard for any reason, it won't report an error, but will simply ignore the clipboard. Epsilon also disables transparent clipboard support when running a keyboard macro, unless clipboard-access is 2.

When the buffer contains syntax-highlighted text, or other text with colors applied to it, you can have Epsilon construct an HTML version of the text that preserves the coloring. You can then use it in a web page, or further convert it using an external converter. Run the copy-formatting-as-html command to copy the current region to the clipboard in HTML format.

By default, when the Windows Console version of Epsilon puts characters on the clipboard, it lets Windows translate the characters from the OEM character set to Windows ANSI, so that national characters display correctly. Epsilon for Windows uses Windows ANSI like other Windows programs, so no translation is needed. See the description of the clipboard-format variable to change this.

When retrieving text from the clipboard, Epsilon sometimes performs conversions to similar but more basic characters. For instance, if you paste Unicode U+02DC SMALL TILDE, Epsilon may replace it with the ASCII tilde character ~. See the clipboard-convert-unicode variable for details on Unicode conversions to and from the system clipboard.

On macOS systems, Epsilon converts from Mac line termination conventions when you paste text. The clipboard-convert-mac-lines variable controls this.

X11 has two different methods of transferring text between programs. The more modern method uses the clipboard, and explicit commands for cutting and pasting text. This is what Epsilon's commands for killing and yanking use.

But an older method uses the "primary selection" to transfer text. Traditionally, selecting text with a mouse sets the text as the primary selection, and the middle mouse button pastes that text into another program.

In Epsilon the middle mouse button provides panning by default, but when you hold down Shift, it inserts the primary selection instead. You can set the mouse-center-yanks variable to make the middle mouse button always insert. Or you can use the yank-x-selection command to yank X's primary selection explicitly. Set the mouse-selection-copies variable to make selecting text with the mouse set the primary selection. This also puts the text into one of Epsilon's kill buffers.

If you mostly use programs that follow the older X11 convention, you can set Epsilon to do so as well. Set the clipboard-format variable to 1. Then Epsilon's cutting and pasting commands will use the primary selection instead of the clipboard selection.

Standard bindings:

    copy-to-clipboard
   insert-clipboard
   copy-formatting-as-html
   yank-x-selection
 



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Killing Text  Commands by Topic   Rectangle Commands


Lugaru Epsilon Programmer's Editor 14.04 manual. Copyright (C) 1984, 2021 by Lugaru Software Ltd. All rights reserved.