Cannot recall what version of Debian stopped copying text in xterm by
Ctrl + C or Shift + Ctrl + C So don't know how to copy from xterm
Unable to paste from xterm into a text editor using Ctrl + V or Shift
+ Ctrl + V
I[s] there is a
way to do it at all?
On Thu, Jun 13, 2024 at 12:16:00PM +1000, Charlie wrote:
Cannot recall what version of Debian stopped copying text in xterm
by Ctrl + C or Shift + Ctrl + C So don't know how to copy from
xterm
xterm is a terminal emulator. Pressing Ctrl-C in a terminal emulator
simply passes a byte (0x03) to the application running inside the
terminal, which is usually a shell. But they're interpreted by the
terminal driver layer first. The stty command allows you to see or
change the bindings of control characters by the terminal driver.
Ctrl-C is usually bound to the 'intr' facility in the terminal driver. Pressing it in a terminal sends the interrupt signal (SIGINT) to all
running foreground processes. It does not copy text. That's a
Windows thing, and you are not in Windows.
Unable to paste from xterm into a text editor using Ctrl + V or
Shift
+ Ctrl + V
Pressing Ctrl-V in a terminal emulator sends a byte (0x16) to the application. At the terminal driver layer, Ctrl-V is usually bound
to the 'lnext' facility (literal next). It's like an escape sequence
for keys. The next key you press *after* Ctrl-V will lose its special meaning, and will just be passed along verbatim.
For example, if you press Ctrl-V Ctrl-C, it won't interrupt foreground processes. Instead, it will simply pass the literal 0x03 byte to the application. It becomes data.
hobbit:~$ printf ^C | hd
00000000 03 |.|
00000001
The ^C there is where I pressed Ctrl-V Ctrl-C.
Now, all of that is just background information.
What you wanted to know, I guess, is "how to copy text between
terminals".
The first step is to highlight the text with the left mouse button.
Drag the mouse over the text while holding the left button. This
creates a "selection" containing the text you've selected.
Next, click on the window that you want to paste the text *into*. You
need this window to have "focus". Depending on your window manager,
clicking may not actually be needed. Some WMs use "focus follows
mouse", which means the mouse pointer simply has to be inside the
window. Others use "click to focus" which means you have to click.
Once you've focused on the receiving window, press the middle mouse
button to paste the selection into the second window.
(X11 uses three-button mice. Everything is designed around this.)
If your mouse is too new or too Microsoft-tainted to have three
buttons, then things get tricky.
If your mouse is literally an old PS/2 style two-button mouse from the
1980s, you might be in real trouble. There are hacks to try to mimic
the middle button in other ways, but you'll have to read documentation
to learn how to invoke them.
Let's assume that's not the case.
If your mouse has two buttons plus a scroll wheel, you might be able
to press the scroll wheel to act as the middle button. Doing this
without also *turning* the scroll wheel takes practice. It can be
done, at least sometimes.
So, that's how you copy and paste text between windows in X11. You
select with the left button, and paste with the middle button.
Obviously the world can't be that simple. While X11 was developing
this interface around three-button mice, Microsoft was building a
different interface around two-button mice.
In the Microsoft paradigm, you copy by highlighting the text you want
to copy, and then performing a second step. That step might be right-clicking a menu and selecting "Copy". Or it might be pressing
Ctrl-C (but not in a terminal emulator). Once you've performed this
copy operation, the text is in a "clipboard", which is separate from
the "selection".
Pasting text from the clipboard into a new window under the Microsoft paradigm is done by pressing Shift-Insert. (Or by right-clicking a
menu and selecting Paste, or by pressing Ctrl-V in some programs, but
not in terminal emulators.)
Some programs that you run on Debian may use the Windows paradigm and
put data into the clipboard instead of the selection. For those
things, you can try Shift-Insert instead of the middle button. It's
just another thing you might need to know/use.
Good luck.
For completeness. Had tried right and left at same time on touchpad of laptop. As it worked years ago.
Didn't think the touchpad had a middle button. Don't know why?
This works on a Dell Vostro laptop.
Highlight the text in xterm with the left of the touchpad.
Cursor in highlighted text, press bottom middle of touchpad.
This alters the block highlight. By pressing the middle of the
bottom of the touchpad: highlights only the lines in xterm.
Go to text editor, in my instance: Kate. Place cursor where to paste. Dialogue box comes up. Select paste and it does that.
Doesn't work in LyX but if placed in text editor Kate first, can be
copied Ctrl+C, then in LyX, Ctrl+V.
On Thu, Jun 13, 2024 at 03:42:27PM +1000, Charlie wrote:
For completeness. Had tried right and left at same time on touchpad
of laptop. As it worked years ago.
Pressing left+right buttons simultaneously was indeed one of the hacks
that people used to mimic the middle button in some X11 setups. I
haven't seen that in practice in quite some time. I think people
mostly stopped implementing it, because two-button mice (without
scroll wheels) fell out of the market.
Didn't think the touchpad had a middle button. Don't know why?
I forgot about laptops with touchpads. Unfortunately, this is not
an area that I've had to research, so I don't know what the current X
and Wayland implementations do to emulate three-button mice. Maybe
someone else knows, or maybe you can find some modern-day
documentation about it on the Internet.
On Thu, Jun 13, 2024 at 03:42:27PM +1000, Charlie wrote:
For completeness. Had tried right and left at same time on touchpad of
laptop. As it worked years ago.
Pressing left+right buttons simultaneously was indeed one of the hacks
that people used to mimic the middle button in some X11 setups. I haven't seen that in practice in quite some time. I think people mostly stopped implementing it, because two-button mice (without scroll wheels) fell
out of the market.
Didn't think the touchpad had a middle button. Don't know why?
I forgot about laptops with touchpads. Unfortunately, this is not
an area that I've had to research, so I don't know what the current X
and Wayland implementations do to emulate three-button mice. Maybe
someone else knows, or maybe you can find some modern-day documentation
about it on the Internet.
This works on a Dell Vostro laptop.
Highlight the text in xterm with the left of the touchpad.
Cursor in highlighted text, press bottom middle of touchpad.
This alters the block highlight. By pressing the middle of the
bottom of the touchpad: highlights only the lines in xterm.
Go to text editor, in my instance: Kate. Place cursor where to paste.
Dialogue box comes up. Select paste and it does that.
Doesn't work in LyX but if placed in text editor Kate first, can be
copied Ctrl+C, then in LyX, Ctrl+V.
Since you mention xterm, you might want to read the xterm(1) man page
and what it has to say about SELECT/PASTE and specifically what it
says about the selectToClipboard option. Apparently you can configure
xterm so that what you highlight with the mouse goes into the clipboard instead of the selection. Then, you could paste it with Shift-Insert
in another application, probably.
I haven't tried that myself.
Another thing you could try (this one, I actually tested):
1) Install the xclip package.
2) Highlight (select) the text with the left button.
3) Run this command, anywhere in your X session:
xclip -o -selection primary | xclip -i -selection clipboard
4) Focus to the target application by clicking/mouse-moving.
5) Press Shift-Insert to paste the clipboard.
Step 3 copies the highlighted text from the selection to the clipboard,
and step 5 pastes from the clipboard. This works in a large number of programs, including xterm, rxvt-unicode, and Google Chrome.
If you find this useful, you will probably want to shorten step 3.
You could set up a shell alias that runs this, or a shell key binding
that runs it, or a Window Manager key binding that runs it, or any
other clever thing you can come up with.
Note that this is very temporary storage. It will not put the text in
the clipboard, nor will a clipboard stack program like clipman see it.
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