Re: Improving X selection?

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 08:19:41 +0200
> From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jan_Dj=E4rv?= <jan.h.d@swipnet.se>
> Cc: Tom Horsley <tom.horsley@ccur.com>, rms@gnu.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> I am very opposed to any solution that drags in any selection I explicitly 
> does not paste into Emacs.  For example, if I want to paste CLIPBOARD, PRIMARY 
> may be a very large selection. Over a slow link, getting PRIMARY also makes 
> Emacs unresponsive for several seconds.

This just means that not all users will like the proposal, and
therefore we should have an option to let the users decide what they
want.  The option should probably be tristate, as the current behavior
could have its zealots as well, who will hate the change.  Maybe even
4 different values, see below.

> But we have had this discussion 
> before.  I think that instead of trying to work around the problem by 
> automatically fetching unwanted selections, we should make Emacs conform to a 
> model that makes it very clear what selection Emacs pastes.

It's okay to support such a model, IMO, but I'm not sure I personally
will always know where is the particular selection I want.  Besides,
reaching out for a mouse can be a nuisance.  In such situations,
assuming that link speed is not a problem, having all the selections
in the kill ring might be a good alternative.

Or maybe we should have C-y/M-y fetch all the available selections one
by one, before they fall back on the kill ring.