On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 12:07 AM, Nate Bargmann n0nb@n0nb.us wrote:
- On 2012 24 Jan 05:04 -0600, Lex Trotman wrote:
I think you are right, the unix system has been screwed up by trying to emulate the windows system on top of it and no-one is sure what anything is supposed to do, and no-one is sure what the "correct" behavior is (except its whatever I say :) or whatever todays GTK nerd thinks who wasn't born when Unix worked right.
</rant2>
Heh! Agreed.
Along the same lines a thread popped up on Debian User this morning regarding clipboard issues:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2012/01/msg01828.html
A followup included this link from JWZ's site:
http://www.jwz.org/doc/x-cut-and-paste.html
If I read Jamie's description correctly, what we are seeing happen is applications not holding onto the Primary selection when they should. This may well be a GTK issue and beyond Geany's/Scintilla's control.
I think it is currently working right, primary is the *current* selection, which is nothing if you de-select. You will note that primary is *not* copied, only clipboard is copied and so is still available when it has been de-selected.
The confusion is that some applications (firefox for eg) copy primary as well and continue to make it available after it has been de-selected, remember its the sending application that is responsible for saying whats in a selection.
Or some users may be (unknowingly?) running clipboard managers in their desktops that do the same. IIUC XFCE is one of those.
GTK may have changed behavior too, although I can't find it in the release notes YMMV.
The third complication is that pastes between scintilla and scintilla don't go through the clipboard, so they can escape the clutches of the X selection/clipboard system and so can behave differently from the rest of the platform. Also Scintilla documentation explicitly states that the selection is nothing if nothing is highlighted, but that doesn't follow if you repeatedly middle paste.
In summary, there are too many things getting their fingers in the pie to be sure what is in control without a lot of effort, and it can be different on different distributions and with different user desktop configurations. I definitely don't think we should be getting our fingers in the mix as well.
Cheers Lex