Dimitar Panayotov shares experience

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GNU Emacs: Universal way to put text in clipboard

Posted by Dimitar Panayotov on 29 November 2006, 2:04

Many time I have been using copy-region-as-kill Emacs function (with shortcut keys, of course) on Windows XP without a problem. However, I recently switched to Debian 4.0 + KDE 3.5.5, only to discover that it does not work!

I was sure that the KDE was blocking something and I was right: it has an option in its “Privacy” settings which, when enabled, does not allow transfer of data in clipboard between applications. However, even with this option disabled (and KDE restarted) it still does not work. I quickly found the right function to be called:

clipboard-kill-ring-save

Of course, to be more convenient, you should call it with a shortcut keys combination, put this in your “.emacs” file:

(global-set-key [f10] ‘clipboard-kill-ring-save)

If you want help about how exactly you should formulate your shortcut keys combination, see this:

Key Bindings - GNU Emacs Tutorial

Yes, I know it is not an easy to read documentation, and I know that we are all sick of loooooong looooong manuals, but what could we do? Read if you want.

5 Responses to “GNU Emacs: Universal way to put text in clipboard”

  1. Roman Lagunov Says:

    @Dimitar:

    Yes, I know it is not an easy to read documentation, and I know that we are all sick of loooooong looooong manuals, but what could we do? Read if you want.

    JFY, in Debian Etch Emacs and Gnus documentation will be move in non-free.
    I’ve recently install Gnus from testing, and it comes without info manual. I download source tarball from gnus.org and manually put info in ~/doc/info

    I think, Emacs without documentation is totally useless. I read it everyday, Just like book :)

    What a pity.

  2. Dimitar Panayotov Says:

    I am quite shocked of this, but it actually makes sense — maintaining documentation of Emacs (I do not know for Gnus) is a gigantic task! It is only natural for them to want money in some near future. What about official document for Emacs, located in gnu.org? Will it be dropped? What about emacswiki.org?

    [Russian] — there is no Russian variant of this, I have been speaking Russian looooooooooong time ago, I still understand almost everything, but I cannot speak it good anymore. :(

  3. Roman Lagunov Says:

    @Dimitar:

    I think Emacs documentation in gnu.org and emacswiki will be untouched.

    Debian developers complains about Emacs documentation don’t satisfied DFSG licence. So it’s a debian issue.

    PS.: About languages - I can understand your cv page in Bulgarian, but I don’t even know Bulgarian :)

    I think our two languages are really close to each other.

  4. Dimitar Panayotov Says:

    Thank god.

    I do not use “man” and “info” often anyway. Although I am a trained cross-platform programmer, I have been using actively (and solely) Debian Etch and KDE for just a week. I catch up with Linux hundreds of times faster than the people around me, but still, Linux is not a small thing. KDE is not easier, too. It just takes some time.

    So, on the topic, I use http://delorie.com and http://emacswiki.org most of the time anyway, so I will be untouched by this change.

    The license stuff is very tough and important area though. If somebody does not accept Debian’s license, this human is either a Microsoft spy, or is just headstrong. :)

  5. Greg Says:

    Thanks so much! This has been bugging me for ages.

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