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The Andrew Cutbuffer
What the Cutbuffer Is
The cutbuffer is a temporary storage place where text or objects that have been Cut are held. The most recently Cut text or object is saved in the cutbuffer and will be inserted at the text caret when you next choose the Paste menu option.
Using the Paste menu option, you can not insert any text or objects except for the very last selection that was Cut. Using keyboard commands, however, you can cycle back through the last eight previously Cut items that are held in a "cut ring."
Cycling through the Cut Ring
If you want to insert some text or an object that was cut (either using the Cut menu or keyboard commands), you can use the following commands:
Esc-y Moves the cut ring back by one and pastes the contents of the cutbuffer at the text caret, replacing selected text if any.
Esc-^Y Moves the cut ring forward by one and pastes the contents of the cutbuffer at the text caret, replacing selected text if any.
To become familiar with the cut ring, you can use Esc-y or Esc-^Y several times in succession after you have Cut several items (without pressing Enter to actually insert the contents of the cutbuffer) and watch the contents of the cut ring cycle through.
A Note for X Users
Non-Andrew applications under X often utilize a different mechanism for cut/copy/paste than the one described here.
Sometimes the interactions between cut rings in X application programs and EZ get very complicated. We are in the process of improving this situation. Here are instructions that work for simple pasting between Xterm and EZ. They may work for other applications. These instructions do NOT work betwen Emacs and EZ.
From Xterm to EZ:
- Drag the left mouse button across the region of text you want to copy; the region should appear as highlighted text (reverse video).
- Position the mouse pointer in the EZ window and choose the Paste menu option. The selected text from the Xterm will appear in the EZ window at the text caret (this text becomes the most recent item in the EZ cut ring).
Note that in Xterm, no menu action is necessary to copy; text that is highlighted in X is automatically copied as soon as it is selected. This is different from EZ where something that is selected (highlighted) is not copied until the Copy command is selected from the Front menu card. Items copied from an Xterm window into EZ will be inserted into the Andrew kill ring in order of when it was selected relevant to the last cut or copied (not selected) text in EZ.
Important Note: When cycling backwards through an Andrew cut ring, if the last item pasted was from an Xterm, you must first press ^Y before the Esc-Y will enter you into the cut ring.
From EZ to Xterm:
- Select the region of text in EZ that you want to paste into your xterm by dragging the left mouse button across that region until it appears as highlighted text.
- Choose the Copy option from the Front menu card.
- Move your mouse pointer to your Xterm and click the middle mouse button. (Note that formatted text will appear as regular text with formatting commands surrounding it in ascii.)
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