[Annoyances] X-Windows Copy & Paste

[Thomas Leonard]

On Tue, Aug 19, 2003 at 01:55:45AM -0700, John Meacham wrote:
[...]
> 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. 

Changing the clipboard on selection destroys the purpose of the clipboard!
The clipboard is a more persistant version of the selection (ie, I can
select and change text without changing the clipboard). Changing the
clipboard without the user's permission would be terrible UI (and also
inconsistant if you only do it in read-only areas).

Looks like gnome-terminal already has this bug (what does the Copy menu
item do, then, if selecting already sets CLIPBOARD?). As far as I can see:

- Select text sets PRIMARY and CLIPBOARD.
- Copy does nothing.
- Paste pastes CLIPBOARD.
- Button-2 pastes PRIMARY.

gedit, on the other hand, works correctly.

Reminding everyone to set PRIMARY when they set CLIPBOARD sounds fine,
though. Windows users won't expect to be able to Paste until they Copy,
and normally it won't matter which Paste they use, since both are set the
same.


-- 
Thomas Leonard			http://rox.sourceforge.net
tal00r at ecs.soton.ac.uk	tal197 at users.sourceforge.net
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