Keyboard Shortcuts – How to Copy/Paste with Keyboard in rxvt

keyboard shortcutsrxvt

I know that I can copy and paste text in rxvt by using the middle mouse button, but I was wondering if there was a way to define keyboard-shortcuts in the .Xdefaults for copy and pasting text.

Moreover it would be really awesome if it would be possible to select the text with the keyboard as well.

EDIT:

Trying to use urxvt-perls does not seem to work (maybe because of the zsh-VI-bindings?). When I try running the script from the command line I also get the following errors:

% perl keyboard-select 
Bareword "urxvt::ControlMask" not allowed while "strict subs" in use at keyboard-select line 137.
Bareword "urxvt::ControlMask" not allowed while "strict subs" in use at keyboard-select line 151.
Execution of keyboard-select aborted due to compilation errors.

Unfortunately I know nothing about a perl and have no idea if this is anyhow related to it not working in urxvt itself.strong text

Best Answer

You can use urxvt-perls to enable keyboards shortcuts for copy and paste in urxvt.

Place the required scripts in /usr/lib/urxvt/perl/ and add these lines to your .X{resources,defaults}:

URxvt.perl-ext-common: ...,keyboard-select
URxvt.keysym.M-Escape: perl:keyboard-select:activate

Related Solutions

Rxvt and Inconsolata (a font)

rxvt does not support TrueType, but there is a fork rxvt-unicode (or urxvt) which can.

urxvt(1) gives two examples:

urxvt -fn "xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:pixelsize=15"
urxvt -fn "9x15bold,xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono"

Copy-paste between urxvt and abiword

For historical reasons, there are two selections¹, with different usage conventions:

The PRIMARY selection automatically changes when you highlight some text with the mouse. There is no “copy” command, it's automatic.
The CLIPBOARD selection changes only when you issue a “copy” command (keyboard shortcut or icon or menu entry).

Classic X11 applications such as urxvt support PRIMARY only. Modern X11 applications such as anything using Gtk/Gnome or Qt/KDE support CLIPBOARD and often, but not always, PRIMARY. The unfortunate consequence is that you can't directly copy-paste between CLIPBOARD-only applications and PRIMARY-only applications, and you can't easily copy-paste between CLIPBOARD-preferring applications and PRIMARY-only applications.

If you highlight text with the mouse in urxvt, you can paste it in Abiword with the middle mouse button (whereas the keyboard shortcut would paste the CLIPBOARD).

If you need to transfer text between selections, you have several methods:

Use a GUI clipboard manager (Autocutsel, XFCE Clipmap, Gnome Glipper, KDE Klipper, Parcellite, …).
Paste into an intermediate application that supports both and copy again.

Use the command-line program xclip or xsel to copy the PRIMARY selection into the CLIPBOARD or vice versa.

xclip -selection primary -o | xclip -selection clipboard -i
xsel | xsel -b
xclip -selection clipboard -o | xclip -selection primary -i
xsel -b | xsel

¹ _{Even more, in fact, but only two that you'd encounter on a regular basis.}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Rxvt and Inconsolata (a font)

Copy-paste between urxvt and abiword

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