[Xquartz-dev] Proposal for PRIMARY and CLIPBOARD Copy/Paste

[George Peter Staplin]

Quoted Jeremy Huddleston <jeremyhu at apple.com>:

>>> This should then provide a somewhat different approach to copying,   where
>>> explicit copy/paste actions (menus,  hot keys etc) result in    
>>> CLIPBOARD being
>>> used and it consider the main data path.  But if one sweeps and  clicks to
>>> select/paste (xterm) it is used.
>>>
>>> The CLIPBOARD approach will be robust in that data (in someform) is
>>> guarenteed
>>> to be copied when the explicit copy action is performed,  and it  can even
>>> survive the program crashing/exiting.  Whereas PRIMARY is the  'power user'
>>> approach which still has the possibily of data loss on crash.
>>>
>>> We then more or less use CLIPBOARD in a similar fashion to how
>>> macos, windows,
>>> and various toolkits do,  while allowing those who prefer PRIMARY   
>>>  (me) to be
>>> comfortable.
>>>
>>> DF
>>
>> At this point I'd settle for 1 new menu item -- "Copy Clipboard."  We
>> could make Paste own PRIMARY and CLIPBOARD and it would all work
>> without ambiguity...
>
> Paste is going to get removed.  There's no reason to actually have a
> 'Paste' menu item... as the expected behavior is not implementable (we
> can't just "paste" into the active X11 application).

That sounds reasonable.

> Additionally, there is no reason to have 'Copy Clipboard'.  We can do
> that automatically using the greedy-CLIPBOARD method I mentioned
> earlier, and having this extra option will just cause unnecessary
> confusion.

I don't believe that works very well.

XQuartz is already going to be an odd non-HIG compliant app without Paste.


George
-- 
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