Re: Saving the selection before killing

[Will <schimpanski@gmx.de>]

Hi, Stefan,

thanks for helping. However, I couldn't make your code work. I saved 
it an extra library and loaded it with "require" after adding some 
missing brackets, provide command etc.

When I evaluate

    (if (> (length string) 0)
        (if yank-handler
  	  (put-text-property 0 (length string)  )))

it still get errors like:

Debugger entered--Lisp error: (void-variable string)
   (length string)
   (> (length string) 0)
   (if (> (length string) 0) (if yank-handler (put-text-property 0 ...)))
   eval((if (> (length string) 0) (if yank-handler (put-text-property 0 
...))))
   eval-last-sexp-1(nil)
   eval-last-sexp(nil)
   call-interactively(eval-last-sexp)

Best,

Will

Stefan Monnier skrev:
>>>>>> "Eli" == Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
>>> From: Will <schimpanski@gmx.de>
>>> Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help
>>> Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2007 14:14:01 +0200
>>>
>>> I'd like to copy text from external applications (e.g. web browser) to 
>>> an Emacs buffer. Often before I paste the text into an Emacs buffer I'd 
>>> like to delete text in the this buffer _without_ it being copied to the 
>>> kill-ring, because then the text from the external application gets lost.
>>>
>>> => How do I switch off that hightlighted text is copied automatially 
>>> into the kill-ring?
>>> => How do I delete a region without it getting copied into the 
>>> kill-ring, e.g. by highlighting the text and pressing <delete>?
> 
>> Try "M-x delete-selection-mode RET".  Is this what you want?
> 
> I bump into the OP's problem every once in a while, but I don't like
> delete-selection-mode for some reason, so I use the patch below instead.
> What it does is that when you kill text, before doing the kill (which will
> replace the current X-selection with the killed text), we save the current
> selection on the kill-ring (only if it doesn't come from us, of course
> since otherwise it's already in the kill-ring).  So I can simply do my kill
> and then C-y (which re-inserts what I just killed) and M-y (which replaces
> the text with the previous X-selection).
> 
> This feature is pretty unnoticeable, so I'm tempted to install it just like
> that, but maybe people want yet-another-config-var to control it?
> 
> 
>         Stefan
> 
> 
> --- orig/lisp/simple.el
> +++ mod/lisp/simple.el
> @@ -2479,6 +2536,20 @@
>  argument is not used by `insert-for-yank'.  However, since Lisp code
>  may access and use elements from the kill ring directly, the STRING
>  argument should still be a \"useful\" string for such uses."
> +  ;; To better pretend that X-selection = head-of-kill-ring, we copy other
> +  ;; application's X-selection to the kill-ring.  This comes in handy when
> +  ;; you do something like:
> +  ;; - copy a piece of text in your web-browser.
> +  ;; - have to do some editing (including killing) before you can yank
> +  ;;   that text.
> +  ;; Note: this piece of code inspired from current-kill.
> +  (let ((paste (and interprogram-paste-function
> +                    (funcall interprogram-paste-function))))
> +    (when paste
> +      (let ((interprogram-cut-function nil)
> +            (interprogram-paste-function nil))
> +        (kill-new paste))))
> +  ;; The actual kill-new functionality.
>    (if (> (length string) 0)
>        (if yank-handler
>  	  (put-text-property 0 (length string)