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

[Soeren Sandmann <sandmann daimi au dk>]

Alan Cox <alan lxorguk ukuu org uk> writes:

> They in the real world are going to have to deal with apps that hang due
> to network failures, NFS going on holiday and all the other realities.
> Clipboards have to be robust to some degree.,

There is nothing wrong with the "user kills process from command line"
scenario in itself. The breaking case is

        - User selects data
        - User picks edit->copy
        - User kills process
        - User expects paste into another window to work

It does break, and the user does lose data if he did the edit->copy to
evacuate his data out of a hosed application. Still it's a rare case,
because it happens only when

        1 The user knows how to kill processes
        2 The user doesn't know how the clipboard works
        3 The user kills the process before pasting 
        4 The application was hosed in the first place

(1) eliminates most users, (2) eliminates a lot of the remaining, (3)
if the user is really trying to save his data, he is likely to finish
that task before attempting to get rid of the hosed application, and
(4) applications are not commonly hosed, but if they are, "edit->copy"
is not likely to work.

Multiply the fractions together and you should start worrying about
the computer getting struck by lightning instead.


Søren