selection.c

#include <X11/Xlib.h> 
#include <X11/Xatom.h>
#include <assert.h>   
#include <unistd.h>   
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main()
{
	Display *dpy = XOpenDisplay(NULL);
	assert(dpy);
	Window w = XCreateSimpleWindow(dpy, DefaultRootWindow(dpy), 0, 0, 
				     200, 100, 0, 0, 0);
	XSelectInput(dpy, w, StructureNotifyMask);
	XMapWindow(dpy, w);
	XEvent e;
	for(;;) {
		XNextEvent(dpy, &e);
		if (e.type == MapNotify) break;
	}
	XFlush(dpy);
	// Copy from application
	Atom a1, a2, type;
	XSelectInput(dpy, w, StructureNotifyMask+ExposureMask);
	int format, result;
	unsigned long len, bytes_left, dummy;
	unsigned char *data;
	Window Sown;
	for (int ii = 0; ii < 50; ii++) {
		Sown = XGetSelectionOwner (dpy, XA_PRIMARY);
		printf ("Selection owner%i\n", (int)Sown);
		if (Sown != None) {
			XConvertSelection (dpy, XA_PRIMARY, XA_STRING, None,
						 Sown, CurrentTime);
			XFlush (dpy);
			//
			// Do not get any data, see how much data is there
			//
			XGetWindowProperty (dpy, Sown, 
				XA_STRING, 	  // Tricky..
				0, 0,	  	  // offset - len
				0, 	 	  // Delete 0==FALSE
				AnyPropertyType,  //flag
				&type,		  // return type
				&format,	  // return format
				&len, &bytes_left,  //that 
				&data);				
			printf ("type:%i len:%lu format:%i byte_left:%lu\n", 
				(int)type, len, format, bytes_left);
			// DATA is There
			if (bytes_left > 0)
			{
				result = XGetWindowProperty (dpy, Sown, 
					XA_STRING, 0,bytes_left,0,
					AnyPropertyType, &type,&format,
					&len, &dummy, &data);
				if (result == Success)
					printf ("DATA IS HERE!!```%s'''\n",
						 data);
				else printf ("FAIL\n");
				XFree (data);
			}
		}
		sleep(2);
	}

	return 0;
}

I know I said I didn't care that much...I lied...to myself as well. ;)

Gross

Yeah, and right now it doesn't seem to work right. It's more-or-less copy and paste from a website I found that was explaining how x selections work, but it only seems to work from things like xterm; when I select something in Firefox, the program puts out that someone owns the selection but that it's empty.

I did fix a few things that were causing warnings so at least it compiles cleanly in c99 mode. ;)

I'll probably only get time here and there to work on this so it'll probably take a while, but I'm getting the hint that Ruby isn't the language for this particular problem. I'll probably have to implement it in c/c++, though I could create an app that works like xsel (only better) and call that from a Ruby script. We'll see.