[Xquartz-dev] Xquartz-dev Digest, Vol 12, Issue 7

[Dave Ray]

Thanks Jeremy for explaining some of these issues. I appreciate the  
work that you are putting into the X11 development and I'm providing  
feedback in hope that it is useful in debugging. This is a very  
complex issue! I've retested and included details below.

>
> On Oct 11, 2008, at 16:57, Dave Ray wrote:
>> That's how I did it. I selected text in the terminal, hit command-C,
>> switched to Textedit, hit command-P.
>
> I assume you mean command-v.

Yes, very tired, sorry..

> Did you try using the menu rather than the keyboard shortcut?

Yes, tried it both ways and was the same.

>> I should have explained what I did a little better.. Yes this is
>> actually what I did. I opened a JPEG image in Gimp, selected all and
>> copied using the menus from within Gimp.
>
> You were good up to this point.  That "puts" the image into
> CLIPBOARD.  xpbproxy then copies that to pasteboard.
>
>> After this, I hit command-C.
>
> And this is your problem.  Now, you copied whatever in PRIMARY to the
> pasteboard.
> command-c just copies what's in PRIMARY (selected).  If you want
> what's in CLIPBOARD to be in pasteboard, that's handled automatically
> whenever CLIPBOARD is changed.

I may have mis-used some semantics in my previous post, with words  
like clipboard, buffer, etc. I've re-tested and tried to be more  
careful with the words I use to describe the results (below).

>> This is normal X11 behavior. It is just a little different that OS-X.
>> In a terminal window, type some text and then highlight it with the
>> mouse (button1). Then un-highlight it by clicking the mouse elsewhere
>> in the terminal window (button 1). Then click mouse button 2, and the
>> text you highlighted should automagically get typed into the  
>> terminal.
>
> Right.
>
>> his is normal copy-paste behavior in the X11 world. It's natural that
>> the question would arise, when should this buffer be allowed to get
>> copied to the OS-X buffer. Only when it's highlighted? or, whenever  
>> it
>> is in the X11 paste buffer. This is what I was testing and describing
>> in my post.
>
> We have no way to know when it's deselected.  All edit->copy does is
> put what's in PRIMARY into pasteboard.  There is nothing fancy going
> on behind the scenes at the X11 client level since we actually can't
> do anything at that level anyways.

I think that's fine -  I am observing some anomalies on my system.

>> Under the current implementation, the text gets copied when it is
>> highlighted, but will not copy after you click to unhighlight it,  
>> even
>> when it remains in the X11 paste buffer.
>
> I highly doubt that is deterministic.  There's no way to actually
> implement the behavior you described (unless it's due to a race
> condition)... and I just tested it out here and it works as expected.

Well I just re-tested and I really am seeing this. Here's a more  
expanded description of what I'm seeing with copy/paste, which I've  
taken the time to capture in hope that it is helpful for developers.

If I type text at the prompt in xterm, highlight it with the mouse,  
then deselect it, then select OS-X menu Edit-> Copy (also tried  
command-C) then try to paste in Textedit and nothing happens, but in  
xterm I can still recall that previously highlighted text with button  
2, as expected for X11.
If I do the exact same thing, but select OS-X Edit-> Copy while the  
text in xterm is still highlighted, it does copy to Textedit. I get  
the same result with command-C as I do with Edit -> Copy.

I am seeing an anomaly between Eterm and xterm that I have never seen  
on an X11 system. First I cannot copy text to Textedit with Eterm at  
all, even using the way that works from xterm. If I do the copy/paste  
routine I described in an Eterm, I can button-2 the previously  
selected text in the same Eterm window, and across to another xterm  
window. But if I highlight the text in Eterm and use OS-X menu Edit ->  
Copy, I get a system beep (as though it had nothing to copy) and  
nothing pastes in Textedit. Now, if I do the same copy/paste routine  
in xterm, I can button-2 the previously selected text in the same  
xterm window and Textedit but NOT into Eterm. Weird.... The thing that  
won't copy into Eterm is the only thing that will copy into Textedit..  
a coincidence? Is there something wrong with my Eterm, or is this the  
symptom of something going on system wide in X11?

On the graphics side, I re-tested and have some details. I can copy  
from Preview to Gimp, but not vise-versa. I tried every possible way I  
could think of that might work. After opening and selecting an image  
in Gimp, I tried just selecting an area and then using OS-X Copy;  
tried selecting an area, using Edit -> Copy from within Gimp, then  
using OS-X copy.  Tried all these with command-C in place of the OS-X  
menu copy. None of these combinations would paste into Preview or  
Photoshop from Gimp.

I cannot copy from Adobe Photoshop Elements 6.0 to Gimp at all. This  
is strange: When I copy an image in Photoshop, I can paste it into  
Preview, but not X11 Gimp. When I copy an image in Preview, I can  
paste it into both Photoshop and into X11 Gimp.

Let me know if these details are useful.

Dave