Re: idea for capture anywhere in x

[Max Nikulin <manikulin@gmail.com>]

On 11/10/2022 05:06, Jean Louis wrote:
>> Jean, make a pause and think ones more. It does not mean extra click
>> and implies nothing different from you recipe.
> 
> Instead of thinking, I am doing it.

I consider it as a problem. It is better to think at first.

> Did you try to invoke Emacs without having Emacs in front of you?

Just because actually selected text in browser may be quite different 
from expectations (due to various tricks on web pages, not to mention 
that JS may completely overwrite clipboard content) I prefer to see 
capture result. That is why I decided to ensure that an emacs frame is 
created (if no one exists yet) when I invoke capture. (Without 
additional efforts from my side the frame is marked as required 
attention even if it is on another virtual desktop, so I can switch to 
it using a DE shortcut.) Perhaps requirement of a frame is the reason 
why I avoided a kind of pitfall you have in mind.

If there is no running Emacs daemon yet, it may be started on demand 
either through systemd socket activation or by
     emacsclient -a "" ...
I do not see any problem here.

If you mean that Emacs can not access X selection if no frames created 
yet then I agree, behavior is strange. On the other hand I do not 
understand why Emacs must be in front of me. A frame may be hidden.

emacsclient -a "" --eval "(server-select-display (getenv \"DISPLAY\"))"
emacsclient --eval "(require 'org-compat)" --eval "(org-get-x-clipboard 
'CLIPBOARD)"

Emacs is not "in front of me", but selection is accessible. Such kind of 
action may be assigned to DE or WM shortcut so I do not see any reason 
why mouse must be involved to get selection (in a way quite similar to C-y).

> Here is updated bash file,
..
> 
> #!/usr/bin/bash
> TEMP=/tmp/xselection.txt
> xsel -o > $TEMP

Such way to work with temporary files is unsafe.

> Capturing notes shall not IMHO be limited to Org mode as that limits
> users to specific lightweight markup language (Org).

I do not mind, but nobody has created a more generic solution that Org 
can use as a base to implement its features. That is why I wrote

>> If Emacs had generic enough functions to create captures then Org would
>> reuse it as it extends outline mode. Maybe such tools should be added to
>> Emacs, but they should be designed at first.


>> A browser extension is a straightforward way to add page URL to the
>> quoted text.
> 
> I don't know which quoted text you mean and how to add page URL to
> quoted text.

I mean a note consisting of page title, page URL, and a quote with text 
selected on the page. Firefox exposes URL to selection, but I consider a 
browser extension as a better variant. You mentioned one extension, 
another one is https://github.com/sprig/org-capture-extension/

>> Plain text files stored in a version control system allows to review
>> changes done at specific time interval.
> 
> To use version control system is non-trivial. To use Emacs is
> non-trivial. Org, anything. What is trivial is to use simple
> applications how they are designed on mobile devices.

Backups, history of changes, and compatibility over decades may be 
serious issues with "simple applications".

> Computer thinks for me.