OT: klipper's misbeliefs [was: NEdit & KDE loss of selection problems]

[wayne.lydecker at l-3com.com]

Joerg Fischer wrote:
> I think I did some progress with the klipper folks in the sense that
> they don't consider the bug report as invalid now.  I presume this is
> because klipper doesn't intend to take the primary if there is already
> a non-zero primary on the screen.
> 
> http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=129994
> 
> I proposed the following: Since it only matters what is in the
> clipboard[1] when the user says 'paste it', it isn't necessary to
> avoid an empty clipboard[2] every time the clipboard gets empty.
> Therefore prevent the clipboard from being empty only when there is a
> middle-click event, ie, set the clipboard only at this time, which is
> also safe because *then* the user just likes to paste the clipboard
> and isn't in the middle of doing anything else (one would possibly
> interfere with).
> 
> Now, they say this wouldn't work, and I can't know.  I see that
> klipper itself couldn't grab middle-click events, but klipper is part
> of KDE and I believe KDE as desktop or window manager could get X
> events before anyone else sees them.  Is this right?
> 
> 
> In any case, all what nedit could do I think would be to keep owning
> empty selections, if it is certain that this doesn't break anything.
> Notice though that in this case the "prevent empty clipboard" option
> simply wouldn't work for nedit, since klipper wouldn't detect any
> selection inside nedit but the very first one - it watches only for
> changes in ownership and nedit would just go on owning the
> selection(s).  So the selection can be empty in nedit, but klipper
> doesn't notice and therefore doesn't take the selection.
> 
> The next thing we or I should do is to write an essay about it for
> Niki, because I don't believe the klipper folks - due to their
> (mis)understanding of selection/clipboard - aren't able to write a
> proper documentation of this, so that anyone running into this would
> have any chances but good luck to figure out what goes on. 
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> J�rg
> 
> 
> 
> 
> [1] For the klipper folks or at least some of them this "is
>     simply a lazy way to name both/either of them [the PRIMARY
>     selection and the CLIPBOARD selection]", while all of them
>     "are well aware of the differences, whatever you [me] might
>     think" - so, after all me tried to explain, I think me is out
>     of the discussion at this point.
>     
> [2] Just in case you don't happen to be such fully aware about
>     the differences between clipboard and selection as the
>     klipper folks, you must replace clipboard with (PRIMARY)
>     selection eacht time to understand the text.

Perhaps they could be convinced to change the default
action for "prevent empty clipboard" to off?  I doubt
it, but it might be worth a try.

Nedit help could also be amended with "common problems"
that describes this situation (in laymen terms).

-- Wayne.