Re: State of the X clipboard, and perhaps a solution

[John Williams <jwilliams business otago ac nz>]

Hi Jerry, 

thanks for your reply.

On Thu, 2004-04-22 at 19:26 -0500, Jerry Haltom wrote:

> You mean such as Evolution or something closing, but not exiting cleanly
> in the background? These are bugs that should be addressed in there
> respective programs. 
I could not agree more.  However, would introducing your idea introduce
new problems of this sort:  a program that does not shutdown cleanly, at
the moment, may not have any untoward (desktop-noticeable) consequences.
However, under your proposal would it then block the clipboard (if it
had copied data)?  If so, this would bring a fresh rash of bugs to the
desktop.  This influx may, or may not, motivate developers to fix their
programs.  But how long will this take?

In general, I think it is better to avoid introducing a new
program/protocol that you _know_ will interact with others to produce
desktop "bugs" with existing, widely deployed software.


> If, using my idea for example, Gnumeric was closed, and a new Gnumeric
[snip]

Again, this relies on other developers being motivated to change.  How
is this to be achieved and managed in a timely fashion?

I really don't want to pour cold water on your efforts.  Do you have any
idea why the other efforts to address this problem failed; and why the
issue has persisted for so long?

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