Explanation and workaround: Re: Selecting a string to paste over copies selectecd text back to the past buffer Was: (Re: Find overwrites paste buffer)

[holle at almaden.ibm.com]

OK, here is what happens respectively what I picked up - and I am lazy :-)

X11 provides a fast copy/past mechanism where you select something with your
left mousebutton by marking or double/triple clicking.
Then you use the middle button to paste this text somewhere. Now is the only
question where that will be. In an xterm (or equivalents) this will be where the
cursor was at the time the middle mouse button was depressed. Emacs (all
flavors) behave either this way, or they warp the cursor to the mouse pointers
position and past the text there.
Now here comes the interesting part. If you just select the text in e.g. an
xterm and want to past it into one of the following programs: Netscape (using
Meta-V), any Java-Swing Program (using Ctrl-V) or Emacs (using Ctrl-y) you will
get nothing (maybe a beep). I checked the Swing docs and they actually say that
X11 has *two* Clipboards. A primary and a secondary - oops ??? I have not been
able to verify this nor have I had the time to trace that stuff down in the
XServer itself - too lazy as I said.

---> Here is the workaround for all you problems:  start klipper - the KDE
Clipboard tool - and dock it in the kpanel. It will provide you a popup menu and
a gloabal keyboard shortcut for the last 10 clipboard contents :-) It feels just
like emacs to me.
So now you can safely mark, copy and then mark, erase, goto klipper, select and
paste without regrets.
BTW: xclipboard is a native Xaw program that has nearly the same functionality
and comes with every xfree86 (maybe any X11) distribution.

The only question that remains is: does anyone know enough about XClipboard
(found in Xmu/Atoms.h) to give us a statement or maybe help KDE/Gnome to be able
to handle this better ?

-holger

Daniel Beckham <danbeck at scott.net> on 05/08/99 06:53:54

Please respond to kdevelop at fara3.cs.uni-potsdam.de

To:   kdevelop at fara3.cs.uni-potsdam.de
cc:
Subject:  Selecting a string to paste over copies selectecd text back to  the
      past buffer  Was: (Re: Find overwrites paste buffer)





Actually, this is part of a larger issue.  I know that unix apps generally
work like this, but I don't know why and I don't know why it's never been
changed.  Here's the scenario:

You just renamed a function from connect_to_mysql_database_on_web_server()
to mysqlConnect().  Of course, the original name was way to long and that's
why you are renaming it to something that makes more sense.

If you double click on the new name, hit Ctrl-C to copy and then double
click on old name to overwrite it... BAM!!! your paste buffer now contains
a copy of what you just selected and not what you meant to paste...   The
solution, you have to delete what you want to replace before you paste.  Do
you know how many times you have to hit the backspace key to delete that
long function name?  A lot.

So... is there any way we can turn off that feature of copying selected
text into the paste buffer?  It's *really* annoying...

Daniel

At 11:05 AM 8/5/99 +1200, you wrote:
>Hi,
>
>This one is really annoying, and I think it's been mentioned here before
>
>Select some text and cut it out (CTRL-X) (or even just copy it (CTRL-C))
>
>next CTRL-F and type in a string to search for.
>
>Now try to paste the buffer back in. Uggh! I get the search string that was
>_before_ the search string I've just typed in. My paste buffer has gone.
>
>Is there an option that prevents this nasty behaviour or can I call it a bug?
>
>--
>Regards,
>
>jbb