4.5 Selections

Selections are one method used by applications to exchange data. By using the property mechanism, applications can exchange data of arbitrary types and can negotiate the type of the data. A selection can be thought of as an indirect property with a dynamic type. That is, rather than having the property stored in the X server, the property is maintained by some client (the owner). A selection is global in nature (considered to belong to the user but be maintained by clients) rather than being private to a particular window subhierarchy or a particular set of clients.

Xlib provides functions that you can use to set, get, or request conversion of selections. This allows applications to implement the notion of current selection, which requires that notification be sent to applications when they no longer own the selection. Applications that support selection often highlight the current selection and so must be informed when another application has acquired the selection so that they can unhighlight the selection.

When a client asks for the contents of a selection, it specifies a selection target type. This target type can be used to control the transmitted representation of the contents. For example, if the selection is ``the last thing the user clicked on'' and that is currently an image, then the target type might specify whether the contents of the image should be sent in XY format or Z format.

The target type can also be used to control the class of contents transmitted, for example, asking for the ``looks'' (fonts, line spacing, indentation, and so forth) of a paragraph selection, not the text of the paragraph. The target type can also be used for other purposes. The protocol does not constrain the semantics.

To set the selection owner, use XSetSelectionOwner().

To return the selection owner, use XGetSelectionOwner().

To request conversion of a selection, use XConvertSelection().

Next Chapter: Pixmap and Cursor Functions

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Christophe Tronche, [email protected]