.\" .\" selection.1 - the cut and paste utility for Linux virtual consoles .\" .\" Modified by faith@cs.unc.edu .\" .TH GPM 1 "October 1994" .SH NAME gpm - a cut and paste utility and mouse server for virtual consoles .SH SYNTAX \fBgpm [options] \fR .SH DESCRIPTION This package, which is currently beta quality, tries to be a useful mouse server for applications running on the Linux console. It is heavily based on the "selection" package, by Andrew Haylett, and quite a good deal of code comes from selection itself. This package is intended as a replacement for "selection", to provide additional facilities. gpm isn't needed if you don't run text-based applications with mouse support. .SH OPTIONS .IP \fB\-a\fP\fIaccel\fP movements of more than \fIdelta\fP pixels are multiplied by \fIaccel\fP (default 2) .IP \fB\-b\fP\fIbaud-rate\fP set the baud rate of the mouse (default 1200 baud) .IP \fB\-B\fP\fIsequence\fP allows changing the buttons (default '123') .IP \fB\-d\fP\fIdelta\fP movements of more than \fIdelta\fP pixels are multiplied by \fIaccel\fP (default 25) .IP \fB\-D\fP dirty operation (debug only) .IP \fB\-m\fP\fImouse-device\fP specify the mouse device (default /dev/mouse) .IP \fB\-r\fP\fInumber\fP sets the responsiveness (default 10) .IP \fB\-s\fP\fIsample-rate\fP set the sample rate of the mouse (default 100) .IP \fB\-t\fP\fImouse-type\fP specify the mouse type (Microsoft = `ms', Mouse Systems Corp = `msc', MM Series = `mm', Logitech = `logi', BusMouse = `bm', MSC 3-bytes = `sun', PS/2 = `ps2'; default = ms) .IP \fB\-T\fP test: read mouse, no clients .IP \fB\-v\fP print version info and exit .SH OPERATION To invoke the selection mechanism, press and release the copy button (the meaning of the buttons may be set at startup as above). A highlighted block will start moving around the screen, correlated with the movement of the mouse. .PP Move the block to the first character of the selection, then press and hold down the copy button. .PP Drag out the selection; the selected text will be highlighted. Then release the copy button. You can take the end of the selection to before the start of the selection if necessary. .PP Double-clicking the copy button while the highlighted block is on the screen selects text by word boundaries; treble-clicking selects by entire lines. If the button is held down after double- or treble-clicking, multiple words or lines may be selected. A word consists of a set of alphanumeric characters and underscores. .PP If a trailing space after the contents of a line is highlighted, and if there is no other text on the remainder of the line, the rest of the line will be selected automatically. If a number of lines are selected, highlighted trailing spaces on each line will be removed from the selection buffer. .PP Pressing the paste button in any virtual console pastes the selected text into the read queue of the associated tty. .PP Any output on the virtual console holding the selection will clear the highlighted selection from the screen, to maintain integrity of the display, although the contents of the paste buffer will be unaffected. .PP The selection mechanism is disabled if the controlling virtual console is placed in graphics mode, for example when running X11, and is re-enabled when text mode is resumed. (But see BUGS section below.) .SH FILES /dev/mouse - default mouse device .br /dev/tty0 - current VC device .SH DIAGNOSTICS \fBgpm\fR complains if any of the devices it requires cannot be located. .SH BUGS The size of the paste buffer is set at 2048 bytes by default. This may be changed at compile time; consult the installation notes. .PP The selection mechanism doesn't work very well with graphics characters, or indeed with any characters where a mapping between the typed character and the displayed character is performed by the console driver. The selection mechanism pastes into the input buffer the character codes as they are displayed on the screen, not those originally typed in by the user. .PP Because of the way that the kernel bus mouse drivers work, allowing only one process to have the mouse device open at once, \fBgpm\fR cannot co-exist with X11 using ATI XL, Logitech and Microsoft bus mice or with a PS/2 mouse. The X server will not start while \fBgpm\fR is running. This problem is not present with serial mice. .SH AUTHORS .nf Andrew Haylett Alessandro Rubini .SH ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .nf A few early gpm bugs were fixed by: .ti +4 Steven S. Dick .br Some bugs fixed, and a good client for testing (mc) by: .ti +4 Miguel de Icaza .br MouseSystems compatible mouse fixes by: .ti +4 Olav Woelfelschneider .br Lefty patches originally suggested by: .ti +4 Sotiris C. Vassilopoulos .br Logitech patches from: .ti +4 Jim Winstead Jr .br Command line options based on those from: .ti +4 Peter Macdonald .br Patches for bus mouse from: .br .ti +4 Erik Troan .br .ti +4 Christoph Niemann .br .ti +4 Koen Gadeyne .br Patches for PS/2 mouse from: .br .ti +4 Hans D. Fink .br Patches for Sun mouse from: .br .ti +4 Michael Haardt .br Run-time configurable mouse buttons suggested by: .br .ti +4 Charlie Brady .br Setsid patches by: .bt .ti +4 Rick Sladkey .sp Apologies to any contributors whose names I have omitted.