Re: Selection changes

[David De La Harpe Golden <david@harpegolden.net>]

On 17/07/10 02:02, Miles Bader wrote:
> David De La Harpe Golden<david@harpegolden.net>  writes:
>> N.B. that definitely needs to be _off_ for bringing emacs in line with
>> other apps.  If it's on, it means C-y inserts primary and pushes primary
>> onto the kill ring.
>
> Why is that bad?
>

Shrug. It's  not what other apps do, and what's more, emacs behaviour 
when both the x-select-enables are turned on at once is particularly 
strange (thanks mostly to x-cut-buffer-or-selection-value's desperate 
attempts to please)

> I'm not arguing based on principle, but rather because I've been using
> it that way (with x-select-enable-primary set to t)
 > for many years with many other standard apps of both sorts,
 > and it seems to work almost perfectly this way.

Perhaps for you - but you, like myself, know what's going on under the 
hood.  To someone who has only used Mac/Windows/fd.o-x11, it's plain 
bizarre.

[Anyway, this is only about what the default should be, you can still 
turn on the option if you like it.]

> In particular:
>
>    * selecting some text in a cut/past style app, and invoking "copy" in
>      that app, should allow the copied text to be pasted in emacs with
>      C-y.
>

Remember that primary is /still set/ by "cut/paste" style apps that set 
clipboard on cut/paste, they still set primary on selecting text.

with both x-select-enables on:

C-y in emacs gives you clipboard for a while, until you select something 
else in emacs, which causes emacs to set and prefer primary, then it 
gives you primary for a bit when you C-y (or the kill ring head), then 
you go "wtf?" and select then C-c again in $app, and you get clipboard 
for a bit when you C-y in emacs, until you select more text, then C-y 
gives you primary, but then you C-v in $app and you still get clipboard, 
but C-y in emacs still gives you primary...

i.e. emacs C-y has magically morphed (as far as the end user is 
concerned) from acting like $app C-v to acting like $app mouse-2.

And then some helpful emacser turns around and tells a newbie "oh just 
turn on cua mode"!  but what cua mode does is make emacs C-v act like
emacs C-y. Since emacs C-y doesn't act like non-emacs C-v, turning on 
cua mode still doesn't make emacs C-v act like non-emacs C-v.


*** So please, turn on one or the other of x-select-enable-primary or
x-select-enable-clipboard by default, not both at once.


>    * selecting some text in a selection-using app (e.g. xterm) should
>      allow the selected text to be pasted in emacs with C-y.

With x-select-enable-primary off but with the mouse-2 rebound, it can 
still be inserted with mouse-2 as in other apps.

xterm itself, while IIRC still maintained, is not typically the terminal
emulator that gets launched when a user clicks "terminal" anymore:
e.g. in the terminal emulator I use (xfce4-terminal),  out of box, 
Shift-Ctrl-C will copy to clipboard and Shift-Ctrl-V will paste from 
clipboard. (Same shortcuts work out-of-box in the KDE terminal, konsole).