Re: Copy to clipboard for Linux

[Ethan M. <merritt@u.washington.edu>]

On Wednesday 19 July 2006 09:22 am, Daniel J Sebald wrote:

> > See, for example, this rant about incompatible clipboard handling
> > under various versions of KDE.
> >
> >    http://www.kdedevelopers.org/taxonomy/term/44?from=20
>
> It isn't until discussing the clipboard client where the person
> starts talking about bugs.  A clipboard client is something that
> keeps a history of things sent to an actual clipboard, that the
> ranter so desires apparently.  That way, after you close your
> program, stuff will still be available in a clipboard somewhere.

Well, that's one use.  It has a lot of other uses, too.
I use it all the time.

> That has nothing to do with Gnuplot.

It has everything to do with gnuplot.  
It was precisely the change in klipper design that broke gnuplot
use under KDE 3.4 and required the previous round of changes by
Timothee.

The point is that gnuplot has to run under the common desktop
environments that people actually use.  If those environments
arguably do not follow the X11 standard - too bad, we still have
to accommodate them.

	EAM

>
> I assume any clipboard client still needs to use CLIPBOARD/PRIMARY
> mechanisms, otherwise it is rewriting the X standard and we'd have to
> compile under something else or use different libraries or something.
>
> > This is not a problem we can solve in gnuplot, and I really don't
> > think it's worth a lot of time spent on the attempt. To convince
> > yourself of this, I suggest you try out cut-and-paste operations
> > between other applications besides gnuplot.  I am pretty sure you
> > will find they all suffer the same issues.  I can tell you from sad
> > experience that it is frustrating to the point of unusability to
> > clip graphics from Acrobat and paste into Gimp or Powerpoint(via
> > Wine).  It works, sometimes, or doesn't work, more often, depending
> > on which machine I'm on, what versions of the various programs and
> > desktop environments are there, and the phase of the moon.  The
> > Windows and Mac crowds can justifiably snicker; this aspect of X
> > desktop environments is seriously broken.
>
> That's not my experience.  I've worked on HPs and Suns and PCs
> running X.  I've consistently been able to select stuff and copy it
> with a center mouse click to other locations.  I see now that GIMP
> appears to be an acception.
>
> Dan

-- 
Ethan A Merritt
Biomolecular Structure Center
University of Washington, Seattle WA