When I read an entry at Chizumatic, I thought that it would be nice to have a PDA with the dictionary, yet use it for lookups off a PC. If we generalize the problem, all we need is to share clipboard between two systems.
Here's how I do it. First, we write a scriptlet, called blitz:
blitzchunk=$HOME/blitz-chunk
# Use a file for trace / debugging. A pipe is too anonymous.
/bin/cat > "$blitzchunk"
# The xclip places itself into background by default, but does
# not daemonize correctly, so ssh hangs. Therefore, we background
# it by hand from shell.
# The option -quiet makes xclip to run in the foreground.
DISPLAY=:0.0 /usr/bin/xclip -quiet -selection clipboard "$blitzchunk" \
>/dev/null 2>&1 </dev/null &Then, if you have a clipboard which you want to share, run: xclip -o | ssh targethost.domain.com blitz (normally you'd have it off a menu in your GNOME, "Share Clipboard to...", perhas as another scriptlet).
The ssh with public key authentication does the job of an RPC method. Also, you need xclip on both systems.
I have to say, blitz is godsent, although I'm the god. I only wonder if I am reinventing a wheel here...