The WIN-OS/2 clipboard view utility will display the captured data in a number of formats, either predefined or private. Auto displays the data in the format it had when placed onto the clipboard.
The clipboard view program CLIPWOS2.EXE, installed in C:\OS2\MDOS\WINOS2, is available within each SAVDM and MAVDM by default. This is a modified version of the original Windows 3.0 clipboard program.
A Clipboard Server (Global Clipboard) runs as a protected mode background process under OS/2 Version 2.0, to service clipboard functions between VDMs. If the Clipboard Server is not executing, clipboard functions are limited to within a single VDM. The Clipboard Server (\OS2\MDOS\WINOS2\VDMSRVR.EXE) is automatically started with the first WIN-OS/2 VDM.
Should a user elect to exit from the Windows clipboard, a warning message will be displayed, advising that exiting will terminate public clipboard functions. The clipboard functions within each VDM are public by default, unless explicitly set to LOCAL, which restricts clipboard activity to that WIN-OS/2 session only.
The WIN-OS/2 clipboard viewer pull-down menus have been enhanced to include support for an Options menu, which contains the Public Clipboard option. Selecting this option causes changes to the local clipboard to be reflected in the public clipboard and vice versa. When deselected, the contents of the public and local clipboards will not affect each other.
The File pull-down menu now supports Import/Export functions; Public must be deselected from the Options pull-down menu before Import/Export can be selected.
Export will copy the current contents of the local clipboard to the Public clipboard.
Import will copy the contents of the public clipboard to the Local clipboard.
Implementation Notes: The Import/Export functions communicate via named pipes to the \pipe\CLPAgent to the clipboard program (CLIPWOS2.EXE) within each VDM. This could cause performance problems on systems which already utilize named pipes heavily for other purposes or when the content of the clipboard data is too big, for example huge bitmaps. If you don't need to exchange clipboard data outside a MAVDM, you could keep it local and therefore get around any possible performance problems.