Re: [Evolution] Small "quirklets" in Evolution 1.0.8

[Mark Neill <mark thisismyown com>]

On Wed, 30 Oct 2002, Dan O'Reilly wrote:
> > impossible == programmatically impossible
>
> Why?
 
Because cut-and-paste depends on two things.

   1)  A window-manager implementation of cutting and 
       pasting objects from one canvas to another, and
       the API to access that implementation.

   2)  Adherence of all applications to said API.

One isn't so bad - X provides a cut-and-paste implementation to some 
degree for text.  It's not what most people would consider "rich" though, 
i.e. the Windows clipboard, where I can cut just about anything on my 
screen to the clipboard, and have it managed through OLE, until it gets 
handed off to another application.

Number two is the problem.  Gnome, KDE, and umpteen other WM's all have 
slightly different ways of implementing their cut-and-paste.  It's 
programatically impossible, in the sense that you can't code to the 
cut-and-paste API of every windowmanager out there for every application.

Maybe someone should write libcutandpaste.so, so that we can just link our 
apps against it, and have C&P magically work.  Until that time, though, 
application developers are forced to pick one or two API's to program 
against.