Re: State of the X clipboard, and perhaps a solution

[Jeffrey Stedfast <fejj ximian com>]

On Fri, 2004-04-23 at 09:16 -0500, Jerry Haltom wrote:
> > It also means that an application is not allowed to crash if it owns the
> > clipboard, and in fact, that it must ignore SIGTERM/SIGINT/etc, since
> > the naive user most likely doesn't understand that killing the
> > application would result in the clipboard data going away.
>
> What sends SIGTERM? The window manager certainly doesn't. If the user
> purposely kills a locked process, I don't think we HAVE to preserve the
> data.

if a user closes an application, I don't think we HAVE to preserve the clipboard selection either :-)

> A locked process hanging in the background is definitely a consideration
> however. Currently, if a process locks up, and it has a window, metacity
> can know this and volunteer to terminate the process for you. In the
> scenario I proposed, the application is no longer visible.
>
> However, is it not possible, and in fact a good idea, for metacity (or
> gnome-session, or another program), to monitor the state of the
> clipboard? 

this is not a good idea. a window manager has no business doing this.

> Now, I don't mean request the data. Simply watch who owns the
> clipboard, and if that process stops responding after a bit offer to
> kill it?

again, the window manager has no business doing this.

Jeff