Bill Gradwohl wrote:
Sometimes this works, and other times it doesn't. In general, I can't
figure out where the "clipboard" is that holds the copied text, and what
causes the inconsistent operation. Is it Gnome, OO, X, me? What is
causing the seemingly random operation?
This page describes some of the details:
http://www.jwz.org/doc/x-cut-and-paste.html
The first part of the page explains the X mechanisms in general.
Basically, you should know that there's a difference between the "select
and middle-click" and the "Copy -> Paste" mechanisms. The difference
isn't so much in their implementation, but that they grab different
clipboard contents. The former uses the "primary" selection, and the
latter uses the "clipboard" selection.
The other thing you should be aware of is that for memory and network
efficiency, the clipboard isn't in the X server. Instead, the clipboard
is in the application that last copied data. When an application
requests a paste operation, it asks the X server which application has
the clipboard, and then asks that application for the clipboard contents.
If I copy from the terminal window and then paste it back into the same
terminal window, or a new terminal window, it works. However, there is
no Paste option available in OO at times.
That's probably because there is no clipboard selection. The paste
operation will only use the clipboard selection. If you highlight text
in any application, you create a context for the primary selection, but
the clipboard selection will only be available after you explicitly ask
the application to "copy" the highlighted information.
If I open up an emacs editor,
I can paste that text into its scratch window. Why won't OO see the same
clipboard area?
Emacs is particularly confusing with regards to its use of primary
selection, because it may overlap with emacs' own internal kill-ring
history.
The second part of the above referenced page describes how Emacs and
XEmacs use the X copy and paste mechanism, and how those two programs
differ.
I've also noticed that if I copy from a particular window (terminal
window) and then close that window, that the copied text also
disappears. That seems to say that the copied text is somehow connected
to the window from where it came and there is no central clipboard.
That's right.
