Re: X clipboard

[David Faure <david mandrakesoft com>]

On Thursday 20 December 2001 16:55, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> Diego González <dggonz yahoo com> writes:
> > 
> > 	while reading the KDE 3.0 beta 1 announcement i found this, it talks
> > about the clipboard that KDE 3.0 provides:
> > 
> >     *  KDE continues to offer the standard X-type clipboard; selected
> > text is copied to this clipboard, and clicking the middle mouse button
> > pastes the contents of this clipboard; and
> >     * KDE also offers a complementary, independent Windows/Mac-type
> > clipboard; text is inserted in the clipboard using an application's
> > cut/copy (or generally Ctrl-x, Ctrl-c) function, and the application's
> > paste (or generally Ctrl-x) function pastes the contents of this
> > clipboard;
> > 
> > maybe it is time to talk to them about implementing a clipboard server
> > (?) specification so that applications running in GNOME and KDE can
> > interoperate and use a clipboard better than the one X-Window provides.
> 
> I think this announcement must be confused - X already has a
> Windows/Mac type clipboard.
> 
>   http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/clipboards.txt
> 
> I hope nothing incompatible has been introduced, that will just make
> the whole clipboard confusion worse.

On the contrary. The Qt change implements exactly what the
above paper defines as being "case b) : 
 b) use CLIPBOARD for the Windows-style cut/copy/paste menu items;
    use PRIMARY for the currently-selected text, even if it isn't
    explicitly copied, and for middle-mouse-click

BTW that clipboard.txt paper already speaks about Qt 3, and indeed
matches what Qt 3 does - so, where is the confusion ?

The above description taken from the announcement describes how things
look like for the user. Internally Qt _does_ use the "Windows/Mac type
clipboard provided by X", i.e. the CLIPBOARD standard selection.

I hope this clears things up.

OTOH Diego's suggestion of a separate clipboard server _is_ what
would make kde/gnome applications incompatible with everything else
(older kde/gnome apps, motif / Xt / etc. apps).

-- 
David FAURE, david mandrakesoft com, faure kde org
http://www.kde.org/people/david.html (my real webpage is down)
KDE 3.0: Konquering the Desktops