Re: emacs 24 and vnc not working

[Perry Smith <pedzsan@gmail.com>]

On Aug 8, 2012, at 2:51 AM, Chong Yidong wrote:

> Perry Smith <pedzsan@gmail.com> writes:
> 
>> Can we please bring back cut buffer support?  That is what I need.
> 
> What makes you think your vnc is using cut buffers?  That would
> be... interesting, if true.  Cut buffers are incredibly obsolete.
> 
>>> I can verify that the clipboard and primary selection are both being
>>> updated -- it just isn't working with the Xvnc server.
> 
> How did you verify this?  Your description is too vague to do much with.

I'm using an old VNC server on AIX -- two different ones I believe.

One comes from here:

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/software/aix/linux/toolbox/date.html
(search for "vnc")

The other comes from here:

ftp://www.oss4aix.org/latest/aix61/ 
(search for tightvnc-server)

Building X11 (and thus any type of X11 server) for AIX is really
hard and so we are stuck in the dark ages.

Both of those have a way to review the source.  I'm not an X11 type
person.

Over the past two days I've been poking and prodding.  I'd LOVE
to be wrong.  Or perhaps one of those vnc servers has an option
that can alter its behavior.

The set up is emacs 22.3 running on AIX 5.3 verses emacs 24.1 running
on 6.1.  I wish I could get on a common OS level but it is a lot
of work.

On the AIX 5.3 host, I have the first vnc (which I'll call vnc 3.3).
On the 6.1 host I have the tightvnc-server.  I have experimented
with the four different combinations such as the emacs 22 version
running on 5.3 but with its display pointing to the tightvnc server
running on 6.1.

Then I have Jolly VNC running on a Mac which is a vnc viewer or a
vnc client.  I have also tried the vncviewer that is stock in the
Mac as well as the vncviewer that comes with the vnc 3.3 package
listed above.  But I think the restriction is due to the vnc server.

I also have a copy of "xclip" which will dump out the Primary
Selection, Secondary Selection, and Clipboard (not sure why I
capitalized all that :-).

I noticed early that by some mysterious way, I can cut from a Mac
window and paste into an xterm client on one of the different vnc
servers and xclip would tell me that none of the three items it can
display changed.

The original list of symptoms is that emacs 22, xterm, and Mac
applications all play happily together.  emacs 24 and xterm also
play happily together.  But emacs 24 and a Mac application (going
through the vnc connection) do not work in either direction.

I finally put some simple lisp into *scratch* to dump out the cut
buffer 0 (as well as the other three select / clipboard areas) and
saw that it was the cut buffer that was the mysterious way that
text was getting back and forth from the Mac applications and the
older x11 applications (AIX's xterm and emacs 22.3).

I realize that this is way off the beaten path but it also seems
like carrying the "bagage" of cut buffers isn't that big.

I can hack my local copy of emacs today and get my copy working but
any AIXer is likely to hit this same issue.

Thank you,
Perry