How does X11 clipboard handle multiple data formats?

Question

It probably happened to you as well - sometimes when you copy a text from some web page into your rich-text e-mail draft in your favorite webmail client, you dislike the fact th

Answer 1

The code in Havoc P's answer to show the formats of the current clipboard sadly no longer works due to an API change in PyGTK. Here's an updated version as a one-liner:

python -c 'import gi; gi.require_version("Gtk", "3.0"); from gi.repository import Gtk, Gdk; print(*Gtk.Clipboard.get(Gdk.atom_intern("CLIPBOARD", True)).wait_for_targets()[1], sep = "\n")'

In Arch Linux, you can install PyGTK using sudo pacman -S pygtk.

Below are some examples.

Text from Chrome:

TIMESTAMP
TARGETS
SAVE_TARGETS
MULTIPLE
STRING
UTF8_STRING
TEXT
text/html
text/plain

Text from Gnome Terminal:

TIMESTAMP
TARGETS
MULTIPLE
SAVE_TARGETS
UTF8_STRING
COMPOUND_TEXT
TEXT
STRING
text/plain;charset=utf-8
text/plain