NAME
       clipboard - Manipulate Tk clipboard

SYNOPSIS
       clipboard option ?arg arg ...?


DESCRIPTION
       This command provides a Tcl interface to the Tk clipboard, which stores
       data for later retrieval using the selection mechanism.   In  order  to
       copy  data into the clipboard, clipboard clear must be called, followed
       by a sequence of one or more calls to clipboard append.  To ensure that
       the  clipboard  is  updated atomically, all appends should be completed
       before returning to the event loop.

       The first argument to clipboard determines the format of  the  rest  of
       the arguments and the behavior of the command.  The following forms are
       currently supported:


       clipboard clear ?-displayof window?
              Claims ownership  of  the  clipboard  on  window's  display  and
              removes  any  previous  contents.   Window  defaults  to  ``.''.
              Returns an empty string.

       clipboard append ?-displayof window? ?-format format? ?-type type? ?--?
       data
              Appends data to the clipboard on window's display  in  the  form
              given by type with the representation given by format and claims
              ownership of the clipboard on window's display.

              Type specifies the form in which the selection is to be returned
              (the  desired  ``target'' for conversion, in ICCCM terminology),
              and should be an atom name such as STRING or FILE_NAME; see  the
              Inter-Client   Communication  Conventions  Manual  for  complete
              details.  Type defaults to STRING.

              The format argument specifies the representation that should  be
              used to transmit the selection to the requester (the second col-
              umn of Table 2 of the ICCCM), and defaults to STRING.  If format
              is  STRING,  the selection is transmitted as 8-bit ASCII charac-
              ters.  If format is ATOM, then the data is divided  into  fields
              separated  by  white  space; each field is converted to its atom
              value, and the 32-bit atom value is transmitted instead  of  the
              atom  name.   For any other format,  data is divided into fields
              separated by white space and each field is converted to a 32-bit
              integer;  an  array  of integers is transmitted to the selection
              requester.  Note that strings passed  to  clipboard  append  are
              concatenated  before conversion, so the caller must take care to
              ensure appropriate spacing across string boundaries.  All  items
              appended  to the clipboard with the same type must have the same
              format.

              The format argument is needed only for compatibility with  clip-
              board  requesters that don't use Tk.  If the Tk toolkit is being
              used to retrieve the CLIPBOARD selection then the value is  con-
              verted  back  to  a  string  at the requesting end, so format is
              irrelevant.

              A -- argument may be specified to mark the end of options:   the
              next  argument will always be used as data.  This feature may be
              convenient if, for example, data starts with a -.


KEYWORDS
