Re: Clipboard improvements, II

[Hans Breuer <Hans Breuer org>]

At 15:21 20.05.04, Matthias Clasen wrote
[...]

> Basically, thats the idea behind wait_for_exit_cleanup(), but the
> general feeling on xdg-list was that it is better to have the clipboard
> manager deal with the "user interaction" aspects, so apps should just
> always call wait_for_exit_cleanup(), and the clipboard manager will
> decide whether to ask the user before saving the contents.

This is interesting. So to make it work on win32 one needs to implement an 
additional 'clipboard manager' ? [Or just leave it as it is now, where the 
content is rendered on 'advertize' , i.e. no delayed rendering. And give 
wait_for_exit_cleanup() an empty implementation ?]

> > If my understanding is right, it certainly should be implementable on
> > win32, although the current code in gdk/win32 does not make use of delayed
> > rendering -  following the comment cause of implementation problems - 
> maybe
> > related to the differences in clipboard owner models (already tried to get
> > some comment from X experts in my previous mail on the subject, but
> > apparently failed ;)
>
> Did my comments above help ?

Yeah, thanks - at least now I'm more confident that I understand how it is 
supposed to work ;-)

> >
> > Now for my questions : all this dealing with GTK Clipboard improveents is
> > still restricted to plain text, right ?
> > Wouldn't it be feasible to extend the API while on it to at least have
> > something like QClipboard::setImage(), i.e. gtk_clipboard_set_image() and
> > gtk_clipboard_get_image(). Or is what QT does so far away from a standard,
> > that it shouldn't be considered for GTK ?
>
> Apps are free to advertise whatever targets they want on the clipboard.
> What we may be missing is convenience api on par with
> gtk_clipboard_set_text(), gtk_clipboard_request_text() for nontextual
> targets.

Certainly. I've searched quite some time to find _any_ gtk application 
which is able to copy&paste more than just text - across process 
boundaries. If anybody knows one please speak up ;-)

> > Oh, and while on the subject of IMO real clipboard improments, could
> > something  be done to also support vector data ? Maybe stuff in SVG from
> > the cross platform application [GIMP and Dia spring to my mind, but there
> > are obviously more] and silently convert it to WMF/EMF on demand within 
> the
> > gdk/win32 backend - and do what ever is appropriate for X11 ?
>
> In the X clipboard model, conversion is generally done on the sender
> side, ie the clipboard owner advertises the content in all targets that
> it knows how to convert it to.

Wasn't part of the clipboard improvement discussion to actually make it 
work - a little like it does on Mac OS and Windoze for years ?
What I'm proposing is not to drop X clipboard model (how could I?) but 
doing the required conversion within Gtk/Gdk - still on the sender side, 
but appropriately hidden from the user of a cross platform api ...

Thanks,
        Hans

-------- Hans "at" Breuer "dot" Org -----------
Tell me what you need, and I'll tell you how to
get along without it.                -- Dilbert