[Annoyances] X-Windows Copy & Paste

[George]

On Tue, Aug 19, 2003 at 12:08:17PM +0100, Richard Boulton wrote:
> 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.

Why not just fix Pterm and Wine to work like mozilla?  Perhaps Wine can't be
easily fixed with respect to PRIMARY, and that's not an issue.  CLIPBOARD
should just work the same if you have explicit copy in all apps that copies
to clipboard.  Why should Pterm work differently from Mozilla and Wine.

> 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.

No, the correct way to solve that is to have Pterm set CLIPBOARD on an
explicit copy command.  Not on selection.  Then you'll be able to paste from
Pterm to all applications.

Seems to me like setting CLIPBOARD on selection is just a backwards hack to
"solve" a problem which can easily be solved by a correct solution.

George

-- 
George <jirka at 5z.com>
   Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
                       -- Pablo Picasso