bug#24652: 25.1.50; gui-backend-get-selection does not work in xterm frame

bug#24652: 25.1.50; gui-backend-get-selection does not work in xterm frame

[Olaf Rogalsky]

Hi emacs,

I try to get `gui-backend-get-selection' to work with xterm:

# In a xterm (version 324):
# 1.) put some text into the clipboard:
echo foobar | xsel -i -b
# 2.) try to insert the clipboard into a fresh *scratch* buffer:
emacs -nw -Q --eval "(progn (xterm--init-activate-get-selection) (insert (gui-backend-get-selection 'CLIPBOARD 'STRING)))"

No text from the clipboard is inserted, instead "Quit" is displayed in
the echo area.

# 3.) for further insight, lets do the same with (setq inhibit-quit t):
emacs -nw -Q --eval "(progn (setq inhibit-quit t) (xterm--init-activate-get-selection) (insert (gui-backend-get-selection 'CLIPBOARD 'STRING)))"

Now the clipboard content is inserted!

My undestanding of the problem is: The xterm escape sequence to query the clipboard content is:

   "\e]52;p;?\a"

and xterm responds to this with

   "\e]52;p;<base64-encoded-clipboard-content>\a"

Note, that the last character of the response is an "\a", which is the
same as the keyboard quit key "\C-g" and hence, the
gui-backend-get-selection command is aborted before finsishing its work.

Possible solution: There is an alternative escape sequence for querying
the clipoard content:

   "\e]52;p;?\e\\"

and the response to this is

   "\e]52;p;<base64-encoded-clipboard-content>\e\\"

which does not suffer from the "\C-g" abortion.

Thanks, Olaf






In GNU Emacs 25.1.50.1 (x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.10.8, cairo version 1.13.1)
 of 2016-09-21 built on blaubaer
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bug#24652: 25.1.50; gui-backend-get-selection does not work in xterm fra

[Stephane Chauveau]

Hi,

I have the same problem and I was indeed able to fix it by replacing the 
\a by \e\\

Below is my patched gui-backend-get-selection  (for 25.5.1) and how I 
enable
it in my .emacs.

(unless window-system
   (when (string= emacs-version "25.1.1" )

     ;;
     ;; The \a used to terminate the OSC52 get-selection reply is causing
     ;; some issues in the current term/xterm.el implementation (emacs 25.1).
     ;; so avoid calling (xterm--init-activate-get-selection)
     ;;
     ;; Below is patched version of the faulty method
     ;;
     (cl-defmethod gui-backend-get-selection
         (type data-type
               &context (window-system nil)
               ;; Only applies to terminals which have it enabled.
               ((terminal-parameter nil 'xterm--get-selection-PATCHED) (eql t)))
       (unless (eq data-type 'STRING)
         (error "Unsupported data type %S" data-type))
       (let* ((screen (eq (terminal-parameter nil 'terminal-initted)
                          'terminal-init-screen))
              (query (concat "\e]52;" (xterm--selection-char type) ";")))
         (with-temp-buffer
           (set-buffer-multibyte nil)
           (xterm--query
            (concat (when screen "\eP") query "?\e\\" (when screen "\e\\"))
            (list (cons query (lambda ()
                                (while (let ((char (read-char)))
                                         (unless (eq char ?\\)
                                           (unless (eq char ?\e)
                                             (insert char))
                                           t))))))
            'no-async)
           (base64-decode-region (point-min) (point-max))
           (decode-coding-region (point-min) (point-max) 'utf-8-unix t))))

     ;; Call this instead of xterm--init-activate-get-selection
     ;; to enable our patched implementation of gui-backend-get-selection
     (defun xterm--init-activate-get-selection-PATCHED ()
       (set-terminal-parameter nil 'xterm--get-selection-PATCHED t)
       )

     ;; a hook that will be called at the end of the xterm initialization
     (defun xterm-osc52-hook ()
       "Specific configuration when running in xterm"
       (message "in xterm-osc52-hook")
       (xterm--init-activate-set-selection)
       (xterm--init-activate-get-selection-PATCHED)
       )
     
     (add-hook 'terminal-init-xterm-hook 'xterm-osc52-hook)
            
     ) ;; end of check of emacs version
   
   )  ;; end of unless window-system

==============

It probably does not work well with Screen because \e\\ is also the DCS 
terminator.

I do not use Screen but looking at the implementation of 
gui-backend-set-selection, I suppose that a solution could be to split 
the DSC request in two between the \e and the \\.

For instance, the line

(concat (when screen "\eP") query "?\e\\" (when screen "\e\\"))

could become

(concat (when screen "\eP") query "?\e" (when screen "\e\\\eP")
  "\\" (when screen "\e\\"))


Remark: Tmux requires a different DCS format and so will not work 
properly even though it is identified as Screen.

bug#24652: 25.1.50; gui-backend-get-selection does not work in xterm frame

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Olaf Rogalsky <olaf.rogalsky@aol.de> writes:

> Possible solution: There is an alternative escape sequence for querying
> the clipoard content:
>
>    "\e]52;p;?\e\\"
>
> and the response to this is
>
>    "\e]52;p;<base64-encoded-clipboard-content>\e\\"

(I'm going through old bug reports that unfortunately got little response at
the time.)

It looks like this was fixed by this change:

commit f09dc0b81c23046c17574c2ef8d614907455f622
Author:     Mattias Engdegård <mattiase@acm.org>
AuthorDate: Sat Aug 3 12:08:27 2019 +0200

    Fix XTerm OSC 52 selection retrieval (bug#36879)
    
    When asking XTerm for the selection via OSC 52, use ST as string
    terminator in the request to get ST as terminator in the reply,
    because BEL is messy to receive in many ways.
    
Does this work for you in Emacs 28? 

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

bug#24652: 25.1.50; gui-backend-get-selection does not work in xterm frame

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

> It looks like this was fixed by this change:
>
> commit f09dc0b81c23046c17574c2ef8d614907455f622
> Author:     Mattias Engdegård <mattiase@acm.org>
> AuthorDate: Sat Aug 3 12:08:27 2019 +0200
>
>     Fix XTerm OSC 52 selection retrieval (bug#36879)
>
>     When asking XTerm for the selection via OSC 52, use ST as string
>     terminator in the request to get ST as terminator in the reply,
>     because BEL is messy to receive in many ways.
>
> Does this work for you in Emacs 28? 

More information was requested, but no response was given within a 
month, so I'm closing this bug report.  If the problem still exists,
please respond to this email and we'll reopen the bug report.

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