Explanation and workaround:

[jbb]

Phew,

Interesting.

Using klipper shows whats happening for the find case

Start kdevelop and klipper. klipper is empty and the find dialog doesn't have
any previous find strings.
Type  CTRL-F and type in any old string even something not in the file and
search for it. klipper is still empty.
Now type CTRL-F again. You have just overwritten your paste buffer with the
previous search string.

No new selection of text has been made by the user. It's the find dialog
selecting the previous string in its dialog (so that the user can type in a
new string and have it overwrite the old string) that causes the paste buffer to
be overwritten. if you select any part of that string in the find dialog then
it will again overwrite the paste buffer!

Well, this is very unfriendly behaviour, but at least klipper can rescue us
here I guess.

sigh
jbb

On Fri, 06 Aug 1999, you wrote:
> 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
> 
-- 
Regards,

jbb