[Annoyances] X-Windows Copy & Paste

[Havoc Pennington]

Hi,

A quick history lesson.

 How We Got Into This Mess.
 ===

 There was a right way to do it in the ICCCM. Some apps didn't do it
 that way. Other apps changed what they did to do it some other weird
 way, to try to work with the apps that did it wrong. Then the apps 
 that did it wrong changed how they worked to work with the apps that 
 did it wrong to adapt to the apps that did it wrong first. Then the 
 apps that did it wrong to adapt to the apps that did it wrong to
 adapt to the apps that did it wrong also did it wrong to adapt to
 some other apps.

 You get the idea. ;-) 
 
 Similar example is backspace/delete setup, until Debian came along
 and said in their policy manual "this is how everything should be set
 up." People kept going round in circles adapting to each other.

Moral of the story: to fix this kind of interoperability fiasco, you:

 1. write down how it works
 2. make all apps match the spec, not each other

"each other" is a moving target, you get in an infinite loop.

Workarounds are fine, but only if the workaround doesn't break
anything. In this case and in the backspace/delete case, the
workarounds break the correct behavior. So the only proper solution is
to write down the spec, then fix all the apps.

Havoc