Re: Pushing text onto the selection buffer (off topic)

[Guy Harris <gharris flashcom net>]

On Sat, Jul 22, 2000 at 09:26:09PM -0500, Matthew wrote:
> Cutting and pasting was always a thorn in my side until I started using 
> klipper.  It's a KDE app but it runs fine under E+Gnome.  It's a clipboard 
> history that's invoked by Alt+v.  A list of the last 10 items copied to the 
> clipboard pops up, and you can select which is pasted.  Excellent tool.

Actually, what appears to pop up, at least with the KDE 1.1.2 klipper,
is a list of the last 10 items that became the PRIMARY selection.  I
popped up a GTK+ application (my standard cut and paste testing
application, whose name begins with "E" and ends with "thereal" :-)),
and found that if I typed something into one of its GtkEntry boxes and
selected it, that was sufficient to add it to klipper's list - I didn't
have to Ctrl+X or Ctrl+C it.

In other words, it perpetuates Qt's notion that the universe rotates
around the PRIMARY selection.  klipper may allow one to work around that
more conveniently, but it's still not exactly what I'd call
ICCCM-friendly, as L.2.6.1.3 says that "The selection named by the atom
CLIPBOARD is used to hold data that is being transferred between
clients, that is, data that is usually being cut or copied, and then
pasted."

Admittedly, one could, if one tried really hard, perhaps read L.2.6.1.1
"The selection named by the atom PRIMARY is used for all commands that
take only a single argument and is the principal means of communication
between clients that use the selection mechanism" as saying "well, 'cut'
and 'copy' take only one argument, so they should use PRIMARY" *and*
that this means that the PRIMARY selection should be the *target* as
well as the source, but given that Qt's behavior gets in the way of
cut-and-paste working between Qt and non-Qt apps in the way one might
expect, I'm not sure it's proper to try to read it in that fashion.

Havoc, is there any chance that some future freedesktop.org standard
could standardize on the Right Way to use the PRIMARY, SECONDARY, and
CLIPBOARD selections?