Re: Clipboard improvements, II

[John Ehresman <jpe wingide com>]

James Henstridge wrote:
> An image or vector diagram can be represented as binary data, so 
> transferring it as a selection is no more difficult than transferring 
> text.  It is just necessary for the two end points to agree on a target 
> name.

I think the question is whether there are standard image and vector 
graphics formats on X11 that programs use to copy data via the 
clipboard.  There are standard formats for image data under Windows, so 
if there were standard formats for gtk programs, converters could be 
written (I'm less sure of what the vector format story is).  It's 
similar to how text is handled -- gtk represents (most) text as utf8 and 
Windows NT uses 16bit wide characters so text is often converted from 
one to the other when it is read from or written to the clipboard.

> My point is that Mozilla uses the OLE clipboard, which is quite similar 
> to the X clipboard

The challenge is to integrate either the OLE clipboard or delayed 
rendering using the lower level win32 clipboard api with the gtk 
mainloop.  It can be done, but there hasn't been much need to do so. 
Maybe there will be more interest once it's easier to write applications 
that cut & paste pixmaps because they require more memory.

John