[Annoyances] X-Windows Copy & Paste

[Richard Boulton]

I havn't thought about this problem terribly much, but I think I'm in
agreement with John Meacham.  It would make at least one situation I
routinely encounter more straightforward.  An example to explain why:

Suppose I have three applications open. (The behaviours of these may not
currently be exactly what I describe, but I'm sure three applications
could be found which do behave in these ways.)

Mozilla -      puts selection in PRIMARY,
               has explicit cut/copy/paste which use CLIPBOARD.
Pterm -        puts selection in PRIMARY,
               has no explicit cut/copy/paste.
Wine:WinWord - has explicit paste from CLIPBOARD,
               but no paste from PRIMARY.


Now consider the following:
 * I am using Mozilla, and at some point do an explicit copy, setting
   CLIPBOARD & PRIMARY.
 * I then use Pterm, and make a selection to set PRIMARY.
 * I then wish to paste this into WinWord.  I have to use the explicit
   paste - but this causes the copy from Mozilla to be pasted.  I have
   no way to paste the selection from Pterm.  In addition, I get
   confused by some old junk appearing when I try to paste.

>From a user interface point of view, this is disastrous.  It would be
much more usful if Pterm set CLIPBOARD as well as PRIMARY - then, at
least, I'd be able to paste from Pterm into all applications.

(FYI, My interest in this thread is that if I can work out what should
be done, I'll submit a patch to pterm to fix it up.)

-- 
Richard