I'm using the xmessage utility to send simple text messages. I would like the recipients to be able to copy the text message so that it can be pasted into other applications. Can anybody tell me how I can do this please? Thanks.

Welcome to LQ, mlenehan!!

Never used xmessage, but the usual Copy-Paste rules for the X Window System in general are:

Left Button (Usual) Drag and Select -> Copy
Right Button Drag -> Extend/Resize Selected Area & Copy
Middle Click -> Paste

HTH

Thanks for the welcome!

I appreciate you taking the time to help. I have, in fact, received a problem-solving reply using another forum that I tried out. My problem I suppose was not understanding the mapping of the mouse keys to a two button mouse and it never occured to me to press both keys simultaeously to paste. Thanks to you and your peers I now know! Needless to say I neglected to mention in my original posting that I was using a two button mouse - sorry.
Is there any way I could press you for a suggestion on how I might perform the same operation using the keyboard instead of the mouse?

There is not a way that I know of which will let you 'Paste' using a key combination that would work universally ( for all X applications ). If it is getting too frustrating to try and click both buttons at the same time, you may want to consider increasing the Emulate3Timeout value ( from a default of 150 ms, I think ) in XF86Config. This would increase the time period that starts when a button is clicked to when the other button is clicked for it to be treated as a single thirdbutton click event. If that makes any sense.