Clipboard manager use case

[Simon Ser]

Hi,

On Wednesday, November 7, 2018 5:18 PM, Albert Vaca <albertvaka at gmail.com> wrote:
> I would like to start a discussion about the need of a protocol for clipboard
> management in Wayland. As far as I know, the current approach for clipboard
> managers and similar apps requires them to be implemented as part of the
> compositor. This is of course a limitation for third party clipboard managers
> and apps like KDE Connect, which I maintain.
>
> For some context, KDE Connect is a service that bridges your smartphone and
> your computers together, with features like wireless file transfers, shared
> notifications, or a shared clipboard across devices (on X11).
>
> For the clipboard synchronization in KDE Connect to work on Wayland, we need
> a way to:
> - Change the contents of the clipboard.
> - Get notified about the contents of the clipboard when it changes.
>
> I think our needs are very similar to those of clipboard managers, so
> probably one single protocol could address both necessities.
>
> What do you think? Should I make a protocol proposal for this use case? Is
> there any similar use case that I'm overlooking?

This is something wlroots would also be interested in. This could be useful for
xclip-like clients and "real" clipboard managers (which let you e.g. navigate in
the clipboard history).

I've already started to work on a protocol [1]. It would be nice if we could
share it. Questions and comments welcome!

Note that there are security considerations that need to be taken into account.

Thanks,

[1]: https://github.com/swaywm/wlr-protocols/pull/25

---
Simon Ser
https://emersion.fr