Fedora 40 emacs clipboard appending

Fedora 40 emacs clipboard appending

[Ken Goldman]

My environment is emacs on Fedora 40 in a VNC window, the vnc client is 
Windows 11.

When I copy-region-as-kill, it appends to the clipboard vnc uses, so
paste in Windows gets a long history.

All works for windows other than emacs, and it only fails when I paste
to Windows.

I know that there are many Linux and emacs clipboards, and something 
changed with Fedora 40.

Any hints?

Re: Fedora 40 emacs clipboard appending

[Po Lu]

Ken Goldman <kgoldman@us.ibm.com> writes:

> My environment is emacs on Fedora 40 in a VNC window, the vnc client
> is Windows 11.
>
> When I copy-region-as-kill, it appends to the clipboard vnc uses, so
> paste in Windows gets a long history.
>
> All works for windows other than emacs, and it only fails when I paste
> to Windows.
>
> I know that there are many Linux and emacs clipboards, and something
> changed with Fedora 40.
>
> Any hints?

Fedora moved to installing the PGTK configuration of Emacs by default,
which isn't designed for X servers, of which your VNC server probably is
one.  You should either reinstall a different package (emacs-x11?) or
build Emacs from source.

Re: Fedora 40 emacs clipboard appending

[Neal Becker]

Po Lu wrote:

> Ken Goldman <kgoldman@us.ibm.com> writes:
> 
>> My environment is emacs on Fedora 40 in a VNC window, the vnc client
>> is Windows 11.
>>
>> When I copy-region-as-kill, it appends to the clipboard vnc uses, so
>> paste in Windows gets a long history.
>>
>> All works for windows other than emacs, and it only fails when I paste
>> to Windows.
>>
>> I know that there are many Linux and emacs clipboards, and something
>> changed with Fedora 40.
>>
>> Any hints?
> 
> Fedora moved to installing the PGTK configuration of Emacs by default,
> which isn't designed for X servers, of which your VNC server probably is
> one.  You should either reinstall a different package (emacs-x11?) or
> build Emacs from source.
rpm -qa emacs*
emacs-filesystem-29.3-5.fc40.noarch
emacs-gtk+x11-29.3-5.fc40.x86_64 <<< This one
emacs-common-29.3-5.fc40.x86_64
emacs-29.3-5.fc40.x86_64

Re: Fedora 40 emacs clipboard appending

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Neal Becker <ndbecker2@gmail.com>
> Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2024 16:56:22 -0400
> 
> Po Lu wrote:
> 
> > Ken Goldman <kgoldman@us.ibm.com> writes:
> > 
> >> My environment is emacs on Fedora 40 in a VNC window, the vnc client
> >> is Windows 11.
> >>
> >> When I copy-region-as-kill, it appends to the clipboard vnc uses, so
> >> paste in Windows gets a long history.
> >>
> >> All works for windows other than emacs, and it only fails when I paste
> >> to Windows.
> >>
> >> I know that there are many Linux and emacs clipboards, and something
> >> changed with Fedora 40.
> >>
> >> Any hints?
> > 
> > Fedora moved to installing the PGTK configuration of Emacs by default,
> > which isn't designed for X servers, of which your VNC server probably is
> > one.  You should either reinstall a different package (emacs-x11?) or
> > build Emacs from source.
> rpm -qa emacs*
> emacs-filesystem-29.3-5.fc40.noarch
> emacs-gtk+x11-29.3-5.fc40.x86_64 <<< This one
> emacs-common-29.3-5.fc40.x86_64
> emacs-29.3-5.fc40.x86_64

Are you sure the OP has the same version installed?

In any case, try to see what happens when you call kill-new instead of
copy-region-as-kill: if kill-new sets the clipboard instead of
appending, then the problem is that somehow Emacs thinks the previous
command was also kill-region.  If kill-new also appends, then I
suggest to step with Edebug through kill-new and see what's going on
there.  Perhaps there's some customization which causes this, or maybe
interprogram-cut-function does something unusual in this case.

Re: Fedora 40 emacs clipboard appending

[Ken Goldman]

On 4/28/2024 4:56 PM, Neal Becker wrote:
> Po Lu wrote:
> 
>> Ken Goldman <kgoldman@us.ibm.com> writes:
>>
>>> My environment is emacs on Fedora 40 in a VNC window, the vnc client
>>> is Windows 11.
>>>
>>> When I copy-region-as-kill, it appends to the clipboard vnc uses, so
>>> paste in Windows gets a long history.
>>>
>>> All works for windows other than emacs, and it only fails when I paste
>>> to Windows.
>>>
>>> I know that there are many Linux and emacs clipboards, and something
>>> changed with Fedora 40.
>>>
>>> Any hints?
>>
>> Fedora moved to installing the PGTK configuration of Emacs by default,
>> which isn't designed for X servers, of which your VNC server probably is
>> one.  You should either reinstall a different package (emacs-x11?) or
>> build Emacs from source.
> rpm -qa emacs*
> emacs-filesystem-29.3-5.fc40.noarch
> emacs-gtk+x11-29.3-5.fc40.x86_64 <<< This one
> emacs-common-29.3-5.fc40.x86_64
> emacs-29.3-5.fc40.x86_64

For the record, this is correct.

Aliasing emacs to emacs-gtk+x11 fixed the clipboard.

Re: Fedora 40 emacs clipboard appending

[Stefan Monnier via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

> Aliasing emacs to emacs-gtk+x11 fixed the clipboard.

I wish we improved our code so that we can build an Emacs that can handle
both Wayland and X11 frames.


        Stefan

Re: Fedora 40 emacs clipboard appending

[tpeplt]

Ken Goldman <kgoldnorwalk@gmail.com> writes:

>>>
>>> Fedora moved to installing the PGTK configuration of Emacs by default,
>>> which isn't designed for X servers, of which your VNC server probably is
>>> one.  You should either reinstall a different package (emacs-x11?) or
>>> build Emacs from source.
>> rpm -qa emacs*
>> emacs-filesystem-29.3-5.fc40.noarch
>> emacs-gtk+x11-29.3-5.fc40.x86_64 <<< This one
>> emacs-common-29.3-5.fc40.x86_64
>> emacs-29.3-5.fc40.x86_64
>
> For the record, this is correct.
>
> Aliasing emacs to emacs-gtk+x11 fixed the clipboard.
>

You might want to consider using the ‘alternatives’ package that was
created to support having different programs that perform similar
actions on a single system.

Try the following at a shell prompt:

$ man 8 alternatives

This should display the manual page for ‘alternatives’ if it is
installed in your file system.

If it is installed, then try the ‘--display’ option for the ‘emacs’
group:

$ alternatives --display emacs
emacs - status is auto.
 link currently points to /usr/bin/emacs-29.3
/usr/bin/emacs-29.3-gtk+x11 - priority 75
/usr/bin/emacs-29.3 - priority 80
Current `best' version is /usr/bin/emacs-29.3.

If this works, then try the ‘--config’ option to change the priority:

$ sudo alternatives --config emacs
Swipe your finger across the fingerprint reader

There are 2 programs which provide 'emacs'.

  Selection    Command
-----------------------------------------------
   1           /usr/bin/emacs-29.3-gtk+x11
*+ 2           /usr/bin/emacs-29.3

Enter to keep the current selection[+], or type selection number: 1

Then use the ‘--display’ option again to confirm the change:

$ alternatives --display emacs
emacs - status is manual.
 link currently points to /usr/bin/emacs-29.3-gtk+x11
/usr/bin/emacs-29.3-gtk+x11 - priority 75
/usr/bin/emacs-29.3 - priority 80
Current `best' version is /usr/bin/emacs-29.3.

Of course, you can use the ‘--config’ option to revert to the default
setting if you have problems with the new configuration.

Here are the first two paragraphs of the ‘Description’ section of ‘man 8
alternatives’ to understand the justification given for the creation of
the ‘alternatives’ package:

DESCRIPTION
       alternatives creates, removes, maintains and displays information about
       the symbolic links comprising the alternatives system. The alternatives
       system  is a reimplementation of the Debian alternatives system. It was
       rewritten primarily to remove the dependence on perl; it is intended to
       be a drop in replacement for Debian's update-dependencies script.  This
       man page is a slightly modified version of the man page from the Debian
       project.

       It  is  possible  for  several  programs fulfilling the same or similar
       functions to be installed on a single system at the same time.  For ex‐
       ample, many systems have several text editors installed at once.   This
       gives choice to the users of a system, allowing each to use a different
       editor, if desired, but makes it difficult for a program to make a good
       choice  of  editor to invoke if the user has not specified a particular
       preference.


-- 
The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.
- Geoffrey Chaucer, The Parliament of Birds.