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

[George Peter Staplin]

Quoted William Mortensen <william5 at u.washington.edu>:
> On Oct 11, 2008, at 9:42 PM, Dave Ray wrote:
>
>> 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.
>
> No no no. You're still doing it wrong. :-) With an application like
> Gimp that has its own Copy menu item (in the menu bar in the Gimp
> window), you don't use OS X's Copy at all. So you should just hit ctrl-
> C (aka Gimp's Copy) and then switch to Preview or whatever and paste.

That's correct.  I usually use the Gimp Edit->Copy menu, and then the  
Mac Preview Edit->Paste.  We tried to make it more sensible than my  
original idea of having Copy Primary, and Copy Clipboard menu items.   
It does a greedy (automatic) copy of the CLIPBOARD selection whenever  
the CLIPBOARD selection is lost from another client owning it.  This  
is just like a standard X11 clipboard manager, hence the inability to  
fight with xclipboard and similar programs, which do similar things.   
You can however disable the pasteboard proxying in the X11 preferences  
of CLIPBOARD if you want.

> You only use OS X's Copy (command-C) for applications that don't have
> their own Copy menu item, like xterm. This difference exists because
> there are two different mechanisms for supporting copy and paste in
> X11, which is why Jeremy keeps talking about CLIPBOARD vs. PRIMARY.

That's a very clear way of putting it -- thank you :)

The inverse of copying from say the Gimp to Preview works like this:
When you copy text or an image from a Mac app the proxy will set  
itself as owner of the X11 PRIMARY and CLIPBOARD (depending on if  
you're using the standard XQuartz preferences), which thereby allows  
pasting into an X11 app with a middle-button, key shortcut, or menu.


George
-- 
http://people.freedesktop.org/~gstaplin/