Re: select-active-regions

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Mon, 20 Jul 2009 01:22:20 +0100
> From: David De La Harpe Golden <david@harpegolden.net>
> CC: jasonr@gnu.org, cyd@stupidchicken.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> 
>  > > When killing, emacs on X11 places text in
>  > > primary if x-select-enable-primary is t
>  > > clipboard if x-select-enable-clipboard is t
>  > >
>  > > When yanking, emacs on x11 gets text from
>  > > primary if x-select-enable-primary is t
>  > > clipboard if x-select-enable-clipboard is t
> 
> > Since Windows only has the clipboard, putting and getting text from
> > there is the best it can do to emulate X in this regard.
> >
> 
> For emulating an X11 clipboard, sure, that makes sense. Not for 
> emulating an X11 primary.  They are different things.

But Emacs has no other way but emulate both with the clipboard on
Windows, because that's the only interprogram buffer there is.

>  > As I explained elsewhere in this thread, Emacs on DOS and Windows
>  > thrashes the clipboard all the time anyway.  So anyone using Emacs on
>  > Windows ought to be accustomed to that already.  I know I am.
> 
> ? Surely it only updates the system clipboard if you:
>   * explicitly kill
>   * {mouse-select text with mouse-drag-copy-region non-nil}

Aha, and did you pay attention how many times you kill something while
editing?

> A basic point of select-active-regions is to allow, when selecting text 
> with either the mouse or keyboard:
>   * don't affect kill-ring_and_clipboard
>   * affect primary

That's fine, but you cannot do that on Windows and let other programs
get at the selected text unless you use the clipboard.

But we are going in circles.  The same arguments get said time and
again, ad nauseam.  I think we should agree to disagree on this one,
and let it be.

> w32 presently uses x-select-enable-clipboard to control clipboard use 
> AFAICS with much the same meaning as on x11.

Not really: x-select-enable-clipboard is t by default on Windows,
because it won't make much sense otherwise.