Re: Whatever happened to the Secondary Selection?

["Charles Lindsey" <chl clerew man ac uk>]

On Sun, 21 Aug 2016 12:28:18 +0100, Paul Davis  
<paul linuxaudiosystems com> wrote:

> I think you should forget about the X Window definition of
> PRIMARY/SECONDARY, since this isn't really about that.
>
> It is about issues with the normal  selection model, that just *happen*  
> to
> be addressed by some of the concepts in X's idea of SECONDARY selection,
> specifically what happens to the insertion point/cursor when making
> conventional selections. The suggestions really have nothing to do with  
> the
> specifics of X's definition, but really distill down to two key  
> differences
> with this "new" selection process:
>
>     1) selection itself does not move the insertion point/cursor
>     2) paste occurs immediately at the end of an uncancelled selection
> process

Yes, that is it. Looking at  
https://specifications.freedesktop.org/clipboards-spec/clipboards-latest.txt,  
which someone pointed us to, it says;

The ICCCM defines these as follows:
  "The selection named by the atom PRIMARY is used for all com-
  mands  that take only a single argument ....

  The selection named by the atom SECONDARY is used:
  o   As  the second argument to commands taking two arguments
      (for example, "exchange  primary  and  secondary  selec-
      tions")

Well I have never encountered such a use ...

  o   As  a  means  of  obtaining data when there is a primary
      selection and the user does not want to disturb it

But that is exactly the point, except that when there is No primary  
selection, there is still an Insertion Point, which is equivalent to a  
primary selection of zero length, and the Insertion Point is what I do not  
want to disturb.

Essentially, the present protocols (whether using the Clipboard, or the  
ugly Primary followed by Middle button) are "PUSH". You go and select some  
text somewhere, and then decide where you want to Paste it.

The protocol I am advocating is "PULL". You are sat at some Insertion  
Point, and then go on a fishing expedition to find some useful text, and  
have it pasted where you are sat.

Anyway, I see that my code has been downloaded 7 times, do we need to hear  
from people who have actually tried it.
> I agree with you that portability issues make it hard to consider  
> adopting
> this sort of model.

This is a "Look and Feel" thing. If it doesn't work on Win 32 (and it  
probably won't), then Microsoft addicts will not be able to use it, which  
is their misfortune. But they won't actually have lost anything that  
currently works for them. Hopefully Wayland can be fixed (but how soon is  
that going to become the default on any major Linux Vendor's system?)

> I didn't find the video terribly compelling -

Yes, I accept that video was a bit turgid (I learnt a lot about making  
videos in the process, but have still much to learn - sorry that you  
people got stuck in my learning process :-) ).

--
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own  
thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131                         Web:  
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
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