emacs24/gtk3 - how to mark rectangle of to primary selection?

emacs24/gtk3 - how to mark rectangle of to primary selection?

[Paul K]

Hallo.

I tried to do it with cua-mode, but no luck.

Have You got any ideas?

best regards,
Paul

Re: emacs24/gtk3 - how to mark rectangle of to primary selection?

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 26.06.2012 um 16:24 schrieb Paul K:

> Have You got any ideas?

My idea is that this does not work in GNU Emacs. You can copy a rectangle of text into a "register" (and then yank or paste it) but not into the primary selection...

--
Greetings

  Pete

Engineer: a mechanism for converting caffeine into designs

Re: emacs24/gtk3 - how to mark rectangle of to primary selection?

[Jonathan Groll]

On Tue, 26 Jun 2012 16:24:12 +0200, Paul K <mafeuser@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hallo.
> 
> I tried to do it with cua-mode, but no luck.
> 
> Have You got any ideas?

You could do it step-wise:
Kill a rectangle. set-mark-command (c-SPC) at one corner, kill-rectangle (C-x
r k) at the opposite corner. Then undo (C-_) if you don't want the
text to be lost.

Then go to the scratch buffer and yank-rectangle (C-x r y). Then do
whatever you normally do to highlight with the mouse etc to get it
into the primary selection.

Cheers,
Jonathan
--
jjg: Jonathan J. Groll : groll co za
has_one { :blog => "http://bloggroll.com" }
"Men always want to be a woman's first love. Women have a more subtle
 instinct: What they like is to be a man's last romance." ~ Oscar Wilde

Re: emacs24/gtk3 - how to mark rectangle of to primary selection?

[Paul K]

Peter and Jonathan,
thank You for Your answer.

These solutions seem to be a bit compicated,
so how about sending marked/selected rectangle to clipboard selection
with or without cua-mode?

best regards,
Paul

On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 8:29 PM, Jonathan Groll <lists@groll.co.za> wrote:
> On Tue, 26 Jun 2012 16:24:12 +0200, Paul K <mafeuser@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hallo.
>>
>> I tried to do it with cua-mode, but no luck.
>>
>> Have You got any ideas?
>
> You could do it step-wise:
> Kill a rectangle. set-mark-command (c-SPC) at one corner, kill-rectangle (C-x
> r k) at the opposite corner. Then undo (C-_) if you don't want the
> text to be lost.
>
> Then go to the scratch buffer and yank-rectangle (C-x r y). Then do
> whatever you normally do to highlight with the mouse etc to get it
> into the primary selection.
>
> Cheers,
> Jonathan
> --
> jjg: Jonathan J. Groll : groll co za
> has_one { :blog => "http://bloggroll.com" }
> "Men always want to be a woman's first love. Women have a more subtle
>  instinct: What they like is to be a man's last romance." ~ Oscar Wilde
>

Re: emacs24/gtk3 - how to mark rectangle of to primary selection?

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 26.06.2012 um 22:33 schrieb Paul K:

> These solutions seem to be a bit compicated,
> so how about sending marked/selected rectangle to clipboard selection
> with or without cua-mode?

I only know the complicated way.

Which other tool are you thinking of that can handle the rectangle like a rectangle?

--
Greetings

  Pete

One-Shot Case Study, n.:
	The scientific equivalent of the four-leaf clover, from which it is concluded all clovers possess four leaves and are sometimes green.

Re: emacs24/gtk3 - how to mark rectangle of to primary selection?

[Paul K]

On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 10:44 PM, Peter Dyballa <Peter_Dyballa@web.de> wrote:

> Which other tool are you thinking of that can handle the rectangle like a rectangle?

My initial question was regarded to what is called in X11 a "primary selection",
but I also know that emacs is aware of difference between "primary
selection" and "clipboard selection", thus I just thought that maybe
emacs can put each kiiled text to that "clipboard selection".

I checked that it is true when You mark and remember text with for
example `M-w`, but it is not true for kill-rectangle command, ie. the
later one does not put text to "clipboard selection".

best regards,
Paul

Re: emacs24/gtk3 - how to mark rectangle of to primary selection?

[suvayu ali]

On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 10:58 PM, Paul K <mafeuser@gmail.com> wrote:
> I checked that it is true when You mark and remember text with for
> example `M-w`, but it is not true for kill-rectangle command, ie. the
> later one does not put text to "clipboard selection".

I think the limitation is in X; it is not rectangle aware. Maybe Emacs
can "fool" X into thinking a rectangle kill to appear as a normal kill
region.

-- 
Suvayu

Open source is the future. It sets us free.

Re: emacs24/gtk3 - how to mark rectangle of to primary selection?

[Yuri Khan]

On Wed, Jun 27, 2012 at 4:19 AM, suvayu ali <fatkasuvayu+linux@gmail.com> wrote:

> I think the limitation is in X; it is not rectangle aware. Maybe Emacs
> can "fool" X into thinking a rectangle kill to appear as a normal kill
> region.

FAR Manager on Windows has rectangular selection and copy/paste.

The Windows clipboard is not inherently rectangle-aware. An
application that copies content to clipboard can provide a prioritized
list of formats, so that the receiving application can choose the
first one it supports. So, in FAR, when a rectangle is copied, the top
format is a custom format tag, followed by CF_UNICODETEXT, followed by
CF_TEXT (which stands for “text in the locale-specific legacy single-
or multibyte encoding”). This way, if the block is then pasted back in
FAR, it knows to paste it as a rectangle, while other applications
paste as a plain garden-variety Unicode text block.

As far as I understand, the corresponding concept in X is “Target
Atoms”, ICCCM chapter 2.6.2.

Re: emacs24/gtk3 - how to mark rectangle of to primary selection?

[Xah Lee]

On Jun 26, 1:33 pm, Paul K <mafeu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Peter and Jonathan,
> thank You for Your answer.
>
> These solutions seem to be a bit compicated,
> so how about sending marked/selected rectangle to clipboard selection
> with or without cua-mode?
>
> best regards,
> Paul
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 8:29 PM, Jonathan Groll <li...@groll.co.za> wrote:
> > On Tue, 26 Jun 2012 16:24:12 +0200, Paul K <mafeu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> Hallo.
>
> >> I tried to do it with cua-mode, but no luck.
>
> >> Have You got any ideas?
>
> > You could do it step-wise:
> > Kill a rectangle. set-mark-command (c-SPC) at one corner, kill-rectangle (C-x
> > r k) at the opposite corner. Then undo (C-_) if you don't want the
> > text to be lost.
>
> > Then go to the scratch buffer and yank-rectangle (C-x r y). Then do
> > whatever you normally do to highlight with the mouse etc to get it
> > into the primary selection.
>
> > Cheers,
> > Jonathan
> > --
> > jjg: Jonathan J. Groll : groll co za
> > has_one { :blog => "http://bloggroll.com" }
> > "Men always want to be a woman's first love. Women have a more subtle
> >  instinct: What they like is to be a man's last romance." ~ Oscar Wilde

it's not difficult to write a elisp command to do this.

basically, the command use kill-rectangle to trim a text into a column
you want, then put it on clipboard. Probably a 15 min job...

you can make do with a key macro instead. It should work.

 Xah

Re: emacs24/gtk3 - how to mark rectangle of to primary selection?

[Aurélien Aptel]

Well, it was longer than expected... Turns out if you don't deactive
the mark, emacs copies the regular active region. My guess is it
corresponds to mouse selection: once a region is selected it is copied
to the primary selection.

(defun my-copy-rect-to-primary ()
  (interactive)
  (when (region-active-p)
    (let ((text (mapconcat 'identity
                           (extract-rectangle
                            (region-beginning)
                            (region-end)) "\n")))
      (deactivate-mark) ;; lost 30mn because of this
      (x-set-selection 'PRIMARY text)
      (message "%s" text))))

Re: emacs24/gtk3 - how to mark rectangle of to primary selection?

[Andreas Röhler]

Am 27.06.2012 19:15, schrieb Aurélien Aptel:
> Well, it was longer than expected... Turns out if you don't deactive
> the mark, emacs copies the regular active region. My guess is it
> corresponds to mouse selection: once a region is selected it is copied
> to the primary selection.
>
> (defun my-copy-rect-to-primary ()
>    (interactive)
>    (when (region-active-p)
>      (let ((text (mapconcat 'identity
>                             (extract-rectangle
>                              (region-beginning)
>                              (region-end)) "\n")))
>        (deactivate-mark) ;; lost 30mn because of this
>        (x-set-selection 'PRIMARY text)
>        (message "%s" text))))
>
>

Thanks!

It might pay to name it "-rectangle-" instead of "-rect-", as the latter is also part of "directory" for example,
which might inflate the output of M-x apropos NAME

Cheers,

Andreas

Re: emacs24/gtk3 - how to mark rectangle of to primary selection?

[Xah Lee]

On Jun 27, 10:15 am, Aurélien Aptel <aurelien.aptel+em...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Well, it was longer than expected... Turns out if you don't deactive
> the mark, emacs copies the regular active region. My guess is it
> corresponds to mouse selection: once a region is selected it is copied
> to the primary selection.
>
> (defun my-copy-rect-to-primary ()
>   (interactive)
>   (when (region-active-p)
>     (let ((text (mapconcat 'identity
>                            (extract-rectangle
>                             (region-beginning)
>                             (region-end)) "\n")))
>       (deactivate-mark) ;; lost 30mn because of this
>       (x-set-selection 'PRIMARY text)
>       (message "%s" text))))

hi Aurélien, thank you for coding this.

i tried to use it and it didn't work on Windows.

here's a alt version i coded up for learning:

(defun copy-rectangle-to-clipboard (p1 p2)
  "Copy region as column (rectangle) to operating system's clipboard.
This command will also put the text in register 0. (see: `copy-to-
register')"
  (interactive "r")
  (let ((x-select-enable-clipboard t))
    (copy-rectangle-to-register ?0 p1 p2)
    (kill-new
     (with-temp-buffer
       (insert-register ?0)
       (buffer-string) )) ) )

it does over-ride register 0 content, but i think one can modify it so
it restores, or not using register all together.

 Xah