(OT) clipboard - was Re: panel plugin praise

[Gavin Chester]

I hope this is not getting too far OT, I'm finding it informative :-)

On Sat, 2005-07-30 at 01:30 -0700, Brian J. Tarricone wrote:
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> Gavin Chester wrote:
> 
> > My enthusiasm is especially high because it solved the _major_
> > irritation I had with my use of evolution email client: evo doesn't
> > integrate with the clipboard very well, to the point that saw me looking
> > for solutions on the evo mail list.  In evo, if you copy a selection of
> > text and then close the mail from which the selection came, the
> > clipboard is purged.
> 
> There's a nice pseudo-spec written by jwz as to how this is supposed to
> work:
> http://www.jwz.org/doc/x-cut-and-paste.html
> 
> In summary:
> 
> * The CLIPBOARD selection (e.g., ctrl+c, or Edit->Copy menu item) should
> be persistent.  If a user closes a window in an app where something was
> selected and copied to CLIPBOARD, this should not be lost.  You paste
> from CLIPBOARD explicitly, via something like ctrl+v or an Edit->Paste
> menu item.
> 
> * The PRIMARY selection (selecting with the mouse) is transient.  As
> soon as the text is no longer actually selected (either by selecting
> something else or by closing the window), it should disappear.  You
> paste from PRIMARY with the middle mouse button.
> 
> Soooo... if evo is purging PRIMARY when the window is closed, that's
> correct.  If it's purging CLIPBOARD, that's essentially a bug (there's
> no real spec for this AFAIK, but for consistency's sake...).  Note that
> if evo *exits*, IIRC you lose CLIPBOARD as well because you don't
> actually get selection data until you try to paste, and if the app isn't
> running anymore, it can't be asked to give selection data.
> 
> 	-brian

I was "dissuaded" that this behaviour was an evo bug when I raised it on
the evo list.  In fact, the behaviour is the second case you cite, ie.,
purging clipboard when a window (open email) is closed. As stated in my
first post, AFAIK evo is the only app I use showing this behaviour. 

It would be nice if this was an "official" standard that I could cite to
the evo maintainers :-(  On the other hand, the link you gave leads to
this standard: "Inter-Client Communication Conventions Manual, Version
2.0, X Consortium Standard, X Version 11, Release 6" - so that's
something I could point the evo maintainers to.  Thanks for the link and
info, Brian and thanks Benedikt for the opinion of its "bug" status.

Gavin