Re: Copy to clipboard for Linux

[Ethan A M. <merritt@u.washington.edu>]

On Friday 14 July 2006 07:17 am, Petr Mikulik wrote:
> > Experimenting on my Linux machine, I downloaded (via CVS) and built
> > gnuplot Version 4.1 and successfully ran it. (You have some really nice
> > demo plots by the way.) Here, however, I can find nothing equivalent to
> > the "Copy to Clipboard" option offered in the Windows version. 

> > Maybe there is some fundamental issue here that I 
> > don't understand.

X11 clipboards are messy. There are at least two of them, and they must
be actively managed in order to work.  This management is usually 
mediated by some component of your desktop / window manager.
On KDE this component is called "klipper".  I don't know what the
equivalent might be under Gnome, but if you are not running it already,
then turning it on might possibly change the clipboard behavior you see.  

Furthermore, the export from gnuplot to the clipboard can be turned on/off
by the X11 resource gnuplot_exprotselection.  To make sure you have this
turned on (it should be on by default, but...) type
	echo "gnuplot*exportselection: on" | xrdb -merge
before starting gnuplot.  If this makes a difference, then you should
edit your Xdefaults file to make this change permanent

> > Perhaps I  am just missing it somewhere, but this should be useful for 
> > pasting into Open Office documents.  
> On Unixes, "middle mouse button" just works. Thus, do
>  	plot x*x
> and then in OpenOffice.org, click by middle mouse button and pasted plot 
> is there! What a magic!

That's the "paste from clipboard" side of it.
The "copy to clipboard" should happen automatically every time you
draw a plot, or click in the active plot window.

-- 
Ethan A Merritt
Biomolecular Structure Center
University of Washington, Seattle 98195-7742