[Annoyances] X-Windows Copy & Paste

Marko Macek Marko.Macek at gmx.net
Tue Aug 19 12:22:43 EEST 2003


Hi!


> It occurs to me that since xterm does not allow modification of the text
> being selected, there is no point in not setting CLIPBOARD on selection.
> since the point of setting CLIPBOARD independently of PRIMARY is to
> allow replacement of the selected text with a paste from another app.
> i.e. no functionality is lost, but we gain the ability to paste X
> selections into apps with explicit paste commands. 

This would overwrite the clipboard contents upon selection. This is NOT
acceptable.

> It seems that the current clipboard.txt doesn't address this issue as
> much as it should, in particular, as written, it implies the need for
> two different pasting mechanisms and explicit copy actions in every app
> whether they need it or not. I would like to propose the following
> slight modifications/expansions of the clipboard.txt explaination. I
> will use the word widget in the generic sense of any UI element which
> can act as a source or destination of selections.

The clipboard and selection are completely independant and have 
been for a long time in properly implemented apps (CDE, ...)

This is why I advocate disabling the selection mechanism for new users
(as part of distro install or  firstlogin/...).

>  * widgets which don't have explicit copy/paste actions or which cannot
> edit
>    the selected buffer (xterm, web browsers (in the browser window), file
>    viewers, static dialogs) should set both CLIPBOARD and PRIMARY on text
>    selection. 

No.
 
[...] snipped

Regards,
Mark

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