On Sun, 2009-01-18 at 13:44 -0500, der Mouse wrote: > >> I would actually recommend you use PRIMARY, not CLIPBOARD (though I > >> also recognize that you may not have meant "clipboard" to be the > >> technical term here). > > No, Peter B and I discussed this, and we explicitly did _not_ want to > > use PRIMARY.
The one thing that concerns me about the CLIPBOARD mechanism is that we might not be able to export so many different types of data on it. > Hm, then I suspect you'll find yourself unable to paste into X clients > with relatively unsophisticated selection paradigms (which are likely > to use PRIMARY and nothing else). Realistically, I can't think what those clients might need to be. The main use-cases we've envisaged are: gschem-gschem windows gschem->office application / presentation app / graphics editor gschem->text editor (underlying text representation of the symbol / schematic data) All the text editors I use (emacs / gvim / ...) can paste text from the CLIPBOARD, and Xterms can even paste text from the clipboard (I presume they push it into the pty as if the user had typed it?). > > The UI paradigm for PRIMARY is passing the currently selected text > > between applications. > > Well, the currently selected object. Text is perhaps the commonest use > of it, but it's by no means restricted to text. But see below. > > > If we start claiming the PRIMARY X selection every time someone has a > > schematic object selected in gEDA, [...] > > Oh, yes, certainly. I wasn't thinking you'd take the selection every > time an object is selected; I was expecting selecting as in picking an > object to operate on and selecting as in preparing to paste would be > different operations (with unfortunately similar names). This isn't what many users will be used to in this day and age. Yes, even I (a youngster) remember when X11 was focus follows mouse, and when you really did have to mouse-over a text entry to type in it.. sadly a lot of that is now lost. (Although I do set my WM to focus windows to focus follows mouse, individual UI controls are still click-to-select). I suppose we could use the PRIMARY selection for a Ctrl+C copy, but most apps I've seen use select text -> PRIMARY, and Ctrl+C -> CLIPBOARD. (I think). I was also wondering if PRIMARY would be unsuitable, we could just intern an atom for a "geda" selection, for pasting between gEDA apps (assuming CLIPBOARD might not be flexible enough, and PRIMARY might want to be reserved for selected text). > > I don't know of any other applications which claim the PRIMARY > > selection for graphical objects. > > That's odd. I don't see any basis in either the ICCCM or the EWMH for > the use of anything else for routine selection data transport. Is > there something I missed, or is this just an observation that some > client authors think they know better than the ICCCM spec that PRIMARY > is "the principal means of communication between clients that use the > selection mechanism"? Most apps work fine, although I've noticed an irritating trend in Gnome apps (The HTML viewing pieces?, as used in Epiphany / Firefox? / Evolution mail client / devhelp), which _don't_ grab the PRIMARY selection for selected text. That is _really_ infuriating. I'm just observing that I've not seen any programs grab the PRIMARY selection for graphical data. -- Peter Clifton Electrical Engineering Division, Engineering Department, University of Cambridge, 9, JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0FA Tel: +44 (0)7729 980173 - (No signal in the lab!) _______________________________________________ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user