[Annoyances] X-Windows Copy & Paste

[Mike Hearn]

On Thu, 2003-08-21 at 14:20, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> The problem that does need solving is persistence of clipboard after
> an app exits, ideally without harvesting a selection and freezing its
> format immediately.

Don't forget things like the fact that we can only copy and paste text
reliably. IIRC there is no standard format for images, or files. Windows
can copy and paste live generic components using OLE - let's not even go
there.

It might be worth considering (timidly) dropping X selections for the
clipboard entirely at some point, and moving to an separate system that
works how you might expect off the bat, and is capable of doing all the
whizzy types people expect, doesn't suffer wierd problems with >64k of
data etc.

That's more a research project than anything else though. I think with a
bit of thought, somebody smart could do something really interesting
with the clipboard idea. It doesn't have to be a super complex
every-feature-possible system, but I think if we were to move away from
X selections entirely it'd be a lot easier to experiment with cool
ideas.

OTOH I don't have time for such a thing at present so I'll shut up now
:)