— Command: x-set-selection type data

This function sets a “selection” in the X server. It takes two arguments: a selection type type, and the value to assign to it, data. If data is nil, it means to clear out the selection. Otherwise, data may be a string, a symbol, an integer (or a cons of two integers or list of two integers), an overlay, or a cons of two markers pointing to the same buffer. An overlay or a pair of markers stands for text in the overlay or between the markers.

The argument data may also be a vector of valid non-vector selection values.

Each possible type has its own selection value, which changes independently. The usual values of type are PRIMARY, SECONDARY and CLIPBOARD; these are symbols with upper-case names, in accord with X Window System conventions. If type is nil, that stands for PRIMARY.

This function returns data.

— Function: x-get-selection &optional type data-type

This function accesses selections set up by Emacs or by other X clients. It takes two optional arguments, type and data-type. The default for type, the selection type, is PRIMARY.

The data-type argument specifies the form of data conversion to use, to convert the raw data obtained from another X client into Lisp data. Meaningful values include TEXT, STRING, UTF8_STRING, TARGETS, LENGTH, DELETE, FILE_NAME, CHARACTER_POSITION, NAME, LINE_NUMBER, COLUMN_NUMBER, OWNER_OS, HOST_NAME, USER, CLASS, ATOM, and INTEGER. (These are symbols with upper-case names in accord with X conventions.) The default for data-type is STRING.

— Function: x-get-cut-buffer &optional n

This function returns the contents of cut buffer number n. If omitted n defaults to 0.

— Function: x-set-cut-buffer string &optional push

This function stores string into the first cut buffer (cut buffer 0). If push is nil, only the first cut buffer is changed. If push is non-nil, that says to move the values down through the series of cut buffers, much like the way successive kills in Emacs move down the kill ring. In other words, the previous value of the first cut buffer moves into the second cut buffer, and the second to the third, and so on through all eight cut buffers.

— Variable: selection-coding-system

This variable specifies the coding system to use when reading and writing selections, the clipboard, or a cut buffer. See Coding Systems. The default is compound-text-with-extensions, which converts to the text representation that X11 normally uses.

     (get 'CLIPBOARD 'mac-scrap-name)
          ⇒ "com.apple.scrap.clipboard"
     (get 'com.apple.traditional-mac-plain-text 'mac-ostype)
          ⇒ "TEXT"

— User Option: x-select-enable-clipboard

If this is non-nil, the Emacs yank functions consult the clipboard before the primary selection, and the kill functions store in the clipboard as well as the primary selection. Otherwise they do not access the clipboard at all. The default is nil on most systems, but t on MS-Windows and Mac.