From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Tom Horsley Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Improving X selection? Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2008 16:01:24 -0500 Message-ID: <20080207160124.7eec9cdd@tomh> References: <8e24944a0802030338i1ce3397yba581ffedbe2f118@mail.gmail.com> <47A5B737.8000804@swipnet.se> <8e24944a0802030512t77c4ca20s6d059df50295ebd2@mail.gmail.com> <8e24944a0802041302n45064c4fm2ac428ceda204254@mail.gmail.com> <47A80B57.3050402@swipnet.se> <8e24944a0802061957re4baf7cr9560fa3496be56b4@mail.gmail.com> <8e24944a0802070815n18dea273j5c3962235d91ca8e@mail.gmail.com> <87bq6sir34.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <8e24944a0802071022i2b259c5fka14f191a3c519157@mail.gmail.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1202421792 1511 80.91.229.12 (7 Feb 2008 22:03:12 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2008 22:03:12 +0000 (UTC) Cc: David De La Harpe Golden , "Jan D." , emacs-devel@gnu.org, "Stephen J. Turnbull" , rms@gnu.org To: Stefan Monnier Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Feb 07 23:03:32 2008 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1JNEpp-0003U4-Mq for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 07 Feb 2008 23:03:10 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1JNEpN-0006eD-2r for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 07 Feb 2008 17:02:41 -0500 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1JNEpE-0006Yh-Bq for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 07 Feb 2008 17:02:32 -0500 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1JNEpC-0006Ww-JH for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 07 Feb 2008 17:02:31 -0500 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1JNEpC-0006Wp-AN for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 07 Feb 2008 17:02:30 -0500 Original-Received: from [12.192.68.2] (helo=users.ccur.com) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS-1.0:DHE_RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1JNEp6-0008Tx-LD; Thu, 07 Feb 2008 17:02:26 -0500 Original-Received: from tomh (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by tomh.ccur.com (8.14.2/8.14.1) with ESMTP id m17L1O2Z013685; Thu, 7 Feb 2008 16:01:25 -0500 In-Reply-To: X-Mailer: Claws Mail 3.2.0 (GTK+ 2.12.5; i386-redhat-linux-gnu) X-detected-kernel: by monty-python.gnu.org: Linux 2.4-2.6 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:88468 Archived-At: On Thu, 07 Feb 2008 14:45:46 -0500 Stefan Monnier wrote: > For all three cases, the first question is "where does the text come from": > No 3 should always use the CLIPBOARD then PRIMARY then kill ring. > No 2 should use the CLIPBOARD only if x-select-enable-clipboard is set. > No 1 is identical except it may also not check PRIMARY either. This is, of course, totally a matter of opinion, and is the reason the complication exists for those of us who have other opinions. For instance, I talk to a lot of systems which only have xterm as the interface. Xterm only does PRIMARY. If you examine the algorithm you just described, it is almost impossible to obtain PRIMARY if a CLIPBOARD exists anywhere else. The fact that emacs works that way was the primary motivation for my original message all those months ago. There is also another deeper philosophical issue: the question of the value of two different selections which are visually identical. I happen to think the invention of CLIPBOARD was perhaps the single most brain damaged idea ever foisted upon users by the singularly brain damaged group of folks who call themselves freedesktop, that's my opinion, which I guess is a minority one, but why shouldn't I be able to configure my emacs to make the difference almost indistinguishable? That's what emacs is about. By all means make the default conform to whatever standard you want to pick, but don't make it impossibly difficult for people with different ideas to work a different way :-). My way is: emacs sets both CLIPBOARD and PRIMARY however I make the selection (so I don't have to mentally keep track of which selection has the pea under it :-), and paste operations of any kind put all the different selections into the kill ring, so if I see the wrong text got pasted, a yank-pop will get me the right text. With the price of an occasional yank-pop, I can almost eradicate the difference bwtween PRIMARY and CLIPBOARD.