Re: How to speed up cutting & pasting from/to emacs?

[Raffaele Ricciardi <rfflrccrd@gmail.com>]

Here is a possible solution, complete with code. I have not tested it,
but I have solved a similar problem recently.  Anyway, use it at your
own risk, as they say.

You could write a script that transfers the current selection to the
clipboard and then asks Emacs to paste it.  Then you would bind this
script to a keyboard shortcut.  This way, you could select the text to
copy and then press that keyboard shortcut to paste it into Emacs.

I will assume that you have both the `xsel` and the `xbindkeys` programs
on your system.  Apparently, there are two different programs whose name
is `xsel` around...  Mine is version 1.2.0 by Conrad Parker.  I will also
assume that your Emacs instance is running as an *edit server*.

Let's call our script ~/bin/emacs-yank:


--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
#!/bin/sh

# Copy the current selection to the clipboard.
xsel --output | xsel --input --clipboard

# Ask Emacs to paste from the clipboard.
emacsclient --no-wait --eval "(yank)"
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---


Remember to make the script executable:

     chmod +x ~/bin/emacs-yank

Here is the `~/.xbindkeysrc.scm` file to tell `xbindkeys` to bind
Windows+Alt+E to the above script (of course, you must adjust the
absolute path to the script):


--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
(xbindkey '(mod4 alt e) "/home/lele/bin/emacs-yank")
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---


Remember to start `xbindkeys`:

     xbindkeys


That's all.  Good luck.