getting selections from a SUNVIEW cmdtool window (quick fix)

[Peter Marshall]

A while ago I asked in the comp.emacs group about an emacstool mouse menu
function that allowed text to be copied from a cmdtool or scolling SUNVIEW
window.  The distributed version only allows selection of text from the
older STUFF buffer.  This makes it very difficult to grab a line or two of
text from a mailtool window for example.  As I got no response I set about
to see how easy it would be to code up.  My solution is not efficient, but
it is very easy:

In the file sun-mouse-fns.el (or in some later releases sun-fns.el) find
the routine named "emacs-menu" and add a new entry to the main menu with
the following line after the line with "Stuff Selection" in it:

  ("Insert Selection" shell-command "get_selection" 1)

Basically this uses the "get_selection" program supplied with the OS and
fires up the shell and to execute it and leave the result after the
current pos.  It takes a while for the text to appear, but I don't do it
enough to worry about speed.

To use it, position your cursor to the destination in emacs, mark the text
you want to grab and then select the "Insert Selection" entry from the
main menu.


Peter Marshall, Data Comm. Manager
CCS, U. of Western Ontario, London, Canada N6A 5B7
(519)661-2151x6032 
peter.marshall at uwo.ca pm at uwovax (BITNET); peter at julian.uucp