X11 Clipboard implementation

[James K Whiting]

> > You may be able to hack some of the controls to support text selection
> > but you won't be able to do it for the general case. For example this
> > wouldn't work in Word. So I don't see this working. In fact it could
> > break assumption made by the application. In my opinion, the only way to
> > copy data from a Windows App to X is via control-c/Clipboard API. 
> 
> Yes, true
> 
> > In Windows, to copy data you generally need to select the data (Under X
> > this would grab the PRIMARY selection) and then hit control-c (Under X
> > this would grab the CLIPBOARD selection). 
> > 
> > In think we should always be grabbing both PRIMARY and CLIPBOARD and
> > releasing them when we loose either (ClearAllSelections=1). This seemed
> > to be the least confusing for many users as well. 
> 
> I don't agree with that, the X clipboard spec is very clear on this, and
> most apps are now in compliance. Mixing them together is what Qt used to
> do, and people found it very confusing when they couldn't figure out
> what was going on with the clipboard.

I think the old standard interface is good (select to copy, middle-click to
paste) and generally consider apps that don't support it to be broken. I
find it to be much easier to use than the Windows/Mac method which requires
using menu items to copy text. I didn't believe the claims that Linux would
suffer from widespread adoption by Windows users, but it seems that it is
happening.

At the very least, Wine should be configurable to work either way. I want
all clipboards to use PRIMARY, because that is the behavior that I am used
to. I don't care what some standards body claims is correct (at least not
when it only affects how I use my computer, and not how my computer
interacts with other computers). I would like to be able to select text in
a window and then paste it into a Wine program, which can not be done with
CLIPBOARD (or at least it is not the standard behavior of programs right
now). I also want to be able to paste anything I cut/copy from Wine
programs by middle clicking. Just because Windows has a worse user
interface than Linux doesn't mean Wine has to follow.

Ideally, I would also like to be able to paste by middle clicking. Since
Windows does not generally use the middle mouse button, it should not cause
problems for Windows programs to lose the middle button. But that is a less
important feature.

James