Re: Stop fiddling with my preferences

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2014 11:27:05 -0500
> From: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com>
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> > Also, I'd appreciate if the history of user-visible changes included
> > the commands necessary to restore the previous behavior.
> 
> I second this.  I'm a bit irritated by the new clipboard behavior
> myself.  We shouldn't ship changes like that without telling people
> how they can keep the behavior theiy're used to.

We didn't do anything like you imply.  See the NEWS excerpt below
(although having such complaints from people who clearly don't read
NEWS is hardly an incentive to continue with these efforts).

  ** Selection changes.

  The default handling of clipboard and primary selections has been
  changed to conform with modern X applications.  In short, most
  commands for killing and yanking text now use the clipboard, while
  mouse commands use the primary selection.

  In the following, we provide a list of these changes, followed by a
  list of steps to get the old behavior back if you prefer that.

  *** `select-active-regions' now defaults to t.
  Merely selecting text (e.g. with drag-mouse-1) no longer puts it in
  the kill ring.  The selected text is put in the primary selection, if
  the system possesses a separate primary selection facility (e.g. X).

  **** `select-active-regions' also accepts a new value, `only'.
  This means to only set the primary selection for temporarily active
  regions (usually made by mouse-dragging or shift-selection);
  "ordinary" active regions, such as those made with C-SPC followed by
  point motion, do not alter the primary selection.

  **** `mouse-drag-copy-region' now defaults to nil.

  *** mouse-2 is now bound to `mouse-yank-primary'.
  This pastes from the primary selection, ignoring the kill-ring.
  Previously, mouse-2 was bound to `mouse-yank-at-click'.

  *** `x-select-enable-clipboard' now defaults to t on all platforms.

  *** `x-select-enable-primary' now defaults to nil.
  Thus, commands that kill text or copy it to the kill-ring (such as
  M-w, C-w, and C-k) also use the clipboard---not the primary selection.

  **** The "Copy", "Cut", and "Paste" items in the "Edit" menu are now
  exactly equivalent to M-w, C-w, and C-y respectively.

  **** Note that on MS-Windows, `x-select-enable-clipboard' was already
  non-nil by default, as Windows does not support the primary selection
  between applications.

  *** To return to the previous behavior, do the following:

  **** Change `select-active-regions' to nil.
  **** Change `mouse-drag-copy-region' to t.
  **** Change `x-select-enable-primary' to t (on X only).
  **** Change `x-select-enable-clipboard' to nil.
  **** Bind `mouse-yank-at-click' to mouse-2.

  *** Support for X cut buffers has been removed.

  *** X clipboard managers are now supported.
  To inhibit this, change `x-select-enable-clipboard-manager' to nil.