Chapter 15
OpenDVE Clipboard
Overview
The OpenDVE Clipboard is a tool that complements the Communique! Plugins, enabling users to easily exchange data between Plugins and other OpenDVE based applications.
You can use the OpenDVE Clipboard to temporarily store information "clipped" from one Plugin for later use in another. The OpenDVE Clipboard can hold images, text, and video frames for later reuse. The OpenDVE Clipboard enhances the existing window manager’s clipboard because OpenDVE accommodates graphics whereas the window manager’s clipboard only supports text.
In this chapter, you can familiarize yourself with the concepts and use of the OpenDVE Clipboard, including:
- clipping to the OpenDVE Clipboard
- pasting from the OpenDVE Clipboard
Copying to the OpenDVE Clipboard
Data Suitable for Clipping
Generally, any type of information manipulated by an OpenDVE based Plugin may be clipped to the clipboard. For example, images from the Graphic Tool and Whiteboard or text from the Text Tool may be clipped.
Plugins that do not access the OpenDVE Clipboard are those using stream data such as audio or video, primarily the Audio and TV Tools. However, some video capture boards allow the Clipboard to work with single frames of video.
A Plugin supporting the OpenDVE Clipboard has Copy and Paste in the Edit menu.
OpenDVE enabled text Plugins have Paste (OpenDVE) in the Edit menu differentiating the OpenDVE command from the window manager’s Paste.
Making a Copy
1. Highlight the data.
For text, position your mouse cursor at the beginning of the text you wish to copy. Press and drag the cursor over the text. Release the mouse button at the end of the text you wish to copy.
In graphic applications you use your mouse to choose a region by defining an area with a bounding box, sometimes called an edit box. Imagine a box containing the graphic you want to capture and put your mouse cursor at the top left corner. Press and drag your mouse cursor diagonally across the graphic to the opposite corner of the imagined box. When you release the mouse button, the bounding box should outline the area that you wish to copy.
2. Choose Copy from the Edit menu.
The selected data will be copied to the OpenDVE clipboard and, for text, the window manager’s clipboard as well. Text in the window manager’s clipboard may be Pasted to other applications within the window manager (i.e. text copied from the Text Tool may be Pasted to an xterm).
Copying image data to the OpenDVE Clipboard destroys any data already present in that clipboard, preserving the window manager’s clipboard.
Copying text data to the OpenDVE Clipboard destroys the current contents of both clipboards.
Pasting from the OpenDVE Clipboard
Putting It Where It Makes Sense
Pasting is context sensitive. Graphic images can only be pasted into graphic OpenDVE Plugins, and text is accepted only by text oriented Plugins.
The OpenDVE Clipboard automatically senses the Plugin context and does not allow users to paste image data into text applications. Nor does it allow text data to be pasted to graphic Plugins.
Pasting a Copy
1. If you are pasting text, mark an insertion point. (Skip to Step 2 for graphic data.)
Click at the point within the text field where you wish to place the text.
2. Choose Paste, or Paste (OpenDVE) if appropriate, from the Edit menu.
Textual data appears at the marked insertion point.
If the Clipboard data is an image, an outline of the graphic appears, allowing you to accurately place the image.
3. Click your mouse at the point where you wish to place the picture.
You can continue to place identical copies of the data until the contents of the OpenDVE Clipboard are overwritten.