bug#3468: drag and drop text

bug#3468: drag and drop text

[Erdkern Erdkern]

I use windows as operating system. I want to drag text from text editor or browser (say Wordpad or Firefox) and drop it in emacs, but this is not possible, drop is not allowed. On the other side, if I drag an unknown filetype (say, an *.rdp-File) into emacs, it is dropped as text. 

In GNU Emacs 22.3.1 (i386-mingw-nt5.1.2600)
 of 2008-09-06 on SOFT-MJASON
Windowing system distributor `Microsoft Corp.', version 5.1.2600
configured using `configure --with-gcc (3.4)'

Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL: nil
  value of $LC_COLLATE: nil
  value of $LC_CTYPE: nil
  value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
  value of $LC_MONETARY: nil
  value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
  value of $LC_TIME: nil
  value of $LANG: DEU
  locale-coding-system: cp1252
  default-enable-multibyte-characters: t

Major mode: Lisp Interaction

Minor modes in effect:
  cua-mode: t
  encoded-kbd-mode: t
  tooltip-mode: t
  tool-bar-mode: t
  mouse-wheel-mode: t
  menu-bar-mode: t
  file-name-shadow-mode: t
  global-font-lock-mode: t
  font-lock-mode: t
  blink-cursor-mode: t
  unify-8859-on-encoding-mode: t
  utf-translate-cjk-mode: t
  auto-compression-mode: t
  column-number-mode: t
  line-number-mode: t
  transient-mark-mode: t

Recent input:
<up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <down> 
<down-mouse-1> <mouse-1> <down-mouse-1> <mouse-1> <down-mouse-1> 
<mouse-1> <mouse-1> <mouse-1> <mouse-1> <mouse-1> <mouse-1> 
<mouse-1> <mouse-1> <mouse-1> <mouse-1> <mouse-1> <mouse-1> 
<mouse-1> <mouse-1> <mouse-1> <mouse-1> <help-echo> 
<help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> 
<help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> <tool-bar> 
<kill-buffer> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> 
<help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> 
<menu-bar> <help-menu> <send-emacs-bug-report>

Recent messages:
For information about GNU Emacs and the GNU system, type C-h C-a.
Loading emacsbug...
Loading regexp-opt...done
Loading emacsbug...done
Loading help-mode...done
Auto-saving...done
Undo! [29 times]
Auto-saving...done
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bug#3468: drag and drop text

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

"Erdkern Erdkern" <Erdkern2000@gmx.de> writes:

> I use windows as operating system. I want to drag text from text
> editor or browser (say Wordpad or Firefox) and drop it in emacs, but
> this is not possible, drop is not allowed. On the other side, if I
> drag an unknown filetype (say, an *.rdp-File) into emacs, it is
> dropped as text.

(I'm going through old bug reports that unfortunately didn't get any
response at the time.)

I tried this in Emacs 27, but on GNU/Linux, and it worked fine for me
there.  Are you still seeing this problem?

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no

bug#3468: drag and drop text

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>
> Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2019 17:29:54 +0200
> Cc: 3468@debbugs.gnu.org
> 
> I tried this in Emacs 27, but on GNU/Linux, and it worked fine for me
> there.  Are you still seeing this problem?

Emacs on MS-Windows doesn't support drag-n-drop of arbitrary text, it
only supports drag-n-drop of file names.  This is indicated by the
"you can't do that" icon shown as the mouse pointer when you attempt
to drop the text onto the Emacs frame.

The Emacs User manual says in "Drag and Drop":

     The XDND and Motif drag and drop protocols, and the old KDE 1.x
  protocol, are currently supported.

which doesn't include any MS-Windows protocols.

The reason for not supporting this on MS-Windows is that the relevant
system APIs are only available for C++ programs.  If someone knows how
to work around this limitation, I'm sure we will welcome patches or at
least an explanation for how to do that in plain C.