Re: If you were writing a Windows and X clipboard integrationmanager...

[Dr Andrew C Aitchison]

On Thu, 30 Jan 2003, Harold L Hunt II wrote:

 ...how would you do it, in 150 words or less?
 
 Seriously, I have been working on this for over a year and I would love to
 hear some of the ideas that people have because I am completely stumped on
 how to make such a clipboard manager work properly.

I'd be completely lost describing it in 150 words just for X.

IIRC there are at least 3 clipboard/cut-buffer mechansims (no I can't 
remember them all).
xprop -root lists 8 CUT_BUFFERX strings (and an atom called
_MOTIF_CLIP_FORMAT_ACROBAT_SELECTION)

There are about 5 (OK maybe only 3) ways of indicating a clipboard
string in a non ascii/latin1 encoding, some of which can't be used by 
clients in different locales.

Throw in MS Windows, and I'd be unhappy unless you can preserve the
ability of X to mark in one window and paste in another, using only the 
mouse. 
I doubt I'd consider a windowing system without it, at least one 
based on keyboard+mouse, or even a stylus. 

-- 
Dr. Andrew C. Aitchison Computer Officer, DPMMS, Cambridge
[EMAIL PROTECTED]   http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~werdna

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Re: Fw: If you were writing a Windows and X clipboard integrationmanager...

[Harold L Hunt II]

Havoc,



Havoc Pennington wrote:

On Thu, Jan 30, 2003 at 03:11:08PM -0500, G O Economou wrote:


In fact, I have made 8 releases :)  I originally copied text from
CUT_BUFFER0, which worked fine for me.  As soon as I released this
people started complaining about what it did not do (namely, it didn't
handle non-U.S. text).



CUT_BUFFER is completely obsolete and totally broken. Most newer apps
don't even use it.



Right, that is what most people keep telling me.

However, I am a pragmatic guy.  If the current effect is that 99% or 
even 75% of applications at least bump a CUT_BUFFER when the cut/copy 
text to the clipboard, then I could at least use this as a signal that I 
need to grab text from CLIPBOARD.

The problem I have is that almost every commercial X Servers for MS 
Windows in existence has solved the problem of clipboard integration 
without causing X clients to unhighlight the current selection.  Thus, I 
know that the problem is solveable.  Worse, my users know that the 
problem is solveable and they keep asking me to solve it.


Here is some background information:
  http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/clipboards.txt

Of course you should also read the ICCCM before you do anything here.



Oh, I have read it.  In fact, I have had it mirrored for a long time:

http://www.msu.edu/~huntharo/xwin/docs/xwindows/ICCCM.pdf


Unfortunately, the ICCCM is about as vague as you can write a document 
without inspiring people to put down what they are doing, buy a gun, 
actively seek you out, and shoot you dead without bothering to drag you 
out into the street.  Case in point, the whole MANAGER... the discussion 
of which leaves me completely clueless as to i) whether this would 
actually help me or not and ii) how to use it:

http://tronche.com/gui/x/icccm/sec-2.html#s-2.8

See also this thread:
  https://listman.redhat.com/pipermail/xdg-list/2002-November/000881.html

And Keith's X extension to monitor selection changes, though this
won't be in 4.3.



Yes, that works very worthwhile... but I hope it does not require that 
all client support the extension.  I will figure that out when I read 
the docs on it later.

Thanks so much for your thoughtful response,

Harold Hunt

Havoc
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RE: Fw: If you were writing a Windows and X clipboard integrationmanager...

[Mike A. Harris]

On Thu, 30 Jan 2003, Harold L Hunt II wrote:

See also this thread:
  https://listman.redhat.com/pipermail/xdg-list/2002-November/000881.html

And Keith's X extension to monitor selection changes, though this
won't be in 4.3.

Wow!  That looks really cool and it is already in the tree as
xfixes, right?

No, it was checked into CVS prior to the November feature cut off 
date, but has subsequently been removed from CVS, so it wont be 
in 4.3.0, and unfortunately maybe never.


Even though that extension isn't in the XFree86-proper release,
I might play around with it for the Cygwin-specific release.  
It sounds like the selection monitoring portions of the
extension will fix my problems with PRIMARY completely!  This is
very exciting!

Keith might have a diff perhaps or tarball, not sure though.

-- 
Mike A. Harris


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