blitz

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...").

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...