[Fwd: what does the 'O' in GNOME stand for? (was RE : Re(2): GNOME Clipboard)]

[Alexandre Owen Muniz <munizao cyberhighway net>]

(sorry, owen. I didn't notice that the reply wasn't set to the list.)

---

• From: Alexandre Owen Muniz <munizao cyberhighway net>
• To: otaylor redhat com
• Subject: Re: what does the 'O' in GNOME stand for? (was RE : Re(2): GNOME Clipboard)
• Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 16:21:08 +0000

otaylor@redhat.com wrote:

> The challenges you are going to have to deal with to get
> something good going are:
> 
>  - Once a program exits, how can you provide the contents
>    of that programs clipboard selection in multiple forms
> 
>  - How do you deal with programs exiting at all? If you
>    always just blindly retrieve the contents of the selection
>    when it changes, then what do you do about huge
>    clipboard selections (in something like the GIMP) that
>    might be several megs in size?
> 

Only retrieve the selection when the user explicitly asks, and then save
it to a file, which will be available to set as the selection later,
even if the program exits. (And keep track of any necessary infomation
about the selection so that it's mime type and perhaps the file (if any)
that the selection originated in would be available. Then you could have
an "open original" option in the clipboard interface to let you launch a
program with the original document, in case your selection is not quite
in the right place, for example. (that would be really cool. Something
to think about for whoever is writing the IDL.))

I was considering writing a panel applet as an interface to a text
clipboard that would work like xclipboard, with one button to retrieve
the selection, one button to set the selection to the most recently
retrieved selection, and history available via the context menu.

>  - How do you display non-text clipboard selections?
>    (Just showing the icon for the mime type might not
>    be a bad idea...)
> 
> Of course, if you act like XClipboard selection and
> limit yourself to text/plain or STRING, then these
> problems go away. They also should be much more
> manageable for Bonobo objects.
> 

This might not be a bad starting point. But ultimately a generic
clipboard that works with any mime type would be very nice to have. I
know gtk's selection mechanisms fairly well from working on my character
picker applet, but I know next to nothing about IDL and corba, so I
wasn't sure I should work on something that would be done the wrong way
and would be completely superceded once the real gnome clipboard is in
place. Still, a panel applet clipboard interface would be quite useful,
and it can always be gutted later.

> Finally, you can think about DND from the clipboard
> onto the GMC desktop. In fact, this could pretty much
> do away with the need for a history if it was
> done well - if you want to save a clipboard selection
> for later, just drag it onto the desktop.
> 

This would be cool. But I think it should be in addition to a history,
not instead of one. I don't like cluttering up my desktop.

Alexandre Muņiz

---