Re: [Usability] newbie suggestions ...

[Gregory Merchan <merchan phys lsu edu>]

On Tue, Dec 11, 2001 at 03:38:46PM -0800, David Moles wrote:
> On Tue, 2001-12-11 at 15:23, Alan Horkan wrote:
> > Christian Rose wrote:
> > 
> > >I guess the reason that Ctrl+A is not included is that it usually
> > >conflicts with the "Go to the beginning of the line" Emacs shortcut, and
> > >GTK+ fields also use Emacs shortcuts. I don't know if Emacs shortcuts
> > >will be enabled by default in GNOME2 though, 
> > >
> > aagh! emacs keybindings by default how scary is that.  useful maybe but 
> > please not on by default.  i suppose i will have to just give up and  
> > C-x, C-c
> > (as far as usability goes it was not obvious C == Ctrl or even Control, 
> > but people were willing to help me learn vim so thats what i learnt)
> 
> Speaking as someone who spends 60% of the day in Emacs, I'd say it's
> not scary at all. :)

:-)  I'm using emacs now and though I don't have any problems with the UI
overall, I consider it a welcome oddball.

> Of course, now that I'm using Evolution as my mailer, I'm going to have
> to get used to not having them.
> 
> I'd be more interested in keyboard shortcuts if the whole clipboard
> situation wasn't such a nightmare -- as long as I can't count on cut
> and paste to work except within a single application, I'm forced to
> fall back on middle-button and the primary X selection. (Which sucks
> rocks, considering how often I find that I've accidentally selected a
> new area when clicking to change applications, or accidentally selected
> an invisible newline, or accidentally just sort of lost the selection.
> Can anyone tell me what the relationship is, if any, between the GNOME
> clipboard and the X selection? And while you're at it, explain why
> GNOME terminal has "Paste" but not "Copy"?

Yes. X provides a mechanism called selections. There are three selections
explicitly identified in the documentation (ICCCM). These are: PRIMARY,
SECONDARY, CLIPBOARD.

PRIMARY should always be whatever text is selected on the screen, and that is
is selected should be visible (i.e., highlight).

SECONDARY is rarely used. When it is used, it most often serves for swapping
data. What we're missing is a way to indicate that something is selected as
such. (I use a light blue for PRIMARY and a pink for SECONDARY in emacs.)

CLIPBOARD contains data which has been explicitly placed on it.
Unlike PRIMARY, this could be any kind of data. (There is no programmatic
restriction on any selection. It is a matter of convention, afaik, that
PRIMARY only contains some form of text data.)

All explicit Cut Copy and Paste commands - i.e., those shown on menus and
accessed by the standard menu shortcuts - should use CLIPBOARD.

PRIMARY and SECONDARY are invisible features. However, it is a sin to allow
text to appear selected and not be the PRIMARY selection.

It is also a sin to use the CLIPBOARD selection for anything other than an
explicit Cut or Copy command.  X-Chat is a known violator.

There is no conflict between these models of data transfer. They just have
to be used correctly.

The problem with GNOME Terminal in 1.x is a bug. Last I checked, this is fixed
in 2.0.

I am working on a program similar to xclipboard, but supporting arbitrary data
transfer. There was a rudimentary working version a while ago, but enough
of Gtk+ has changed, and I've not had enough time, so this is no longer so.
I checked on freshmeat prior to starting that code and not one of the results
worked correctly.

By all reports, KDE also will be (or is) working correctly now. Assuming
no madness in GNOME, or deviation in KDE, we will have interoperable
clipboards soon.


Cheers,
Greg Merchan