[arch-general] What are people's opinions about this?

[Grigorios Bouzakis]

Heiko Baums wrote:
>
>> > On Wednesday, April 13, 2011 20:45:32 Grigorios Bouzakis wrote:
>> >> This feature request: https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/23747
>> >> 
>> >> Greg
>
> From what I read about it now, definitely not!
>
> I regularly use both standard X buffers and I need both. I need the
> Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V method as well as just pasting the selection with the
> middle mouse click. Btw., usually the clipboards of most DEs - at least
> the ones of KDE and Xfce - already let the user decide and configure
> how both buffers are handled, if they are synchronized or if they are
> separated.
>
> So I don't think there's a need for such a tool like autocutsel and it
> definitely doesn't have to become a default, means a dependency. Users
> who want autocutsel can, of course, install it. But there shouldn't be
> any system wide config which forces the users to use it the way the
> admin wants them to use it.

Its a bit long, so apologies beforehand.

I will post about this here and not the bug tracker, hoping more people
will read it. If you are interested in learning about the X clipboard
consult this document:
http://standards.freedesktop.org/clipboards-spec/clipboards-latest.txt
its the latest standard i know of.
Additionally, some Debian developer actually wrote man pages for this
"very poorly documented" but very useful application:

autocutsel(1): http://goo.gl/oLjME
cutsel(1): http://goo.gl/al1WN

Heres a step by step demonstration:

Testcase A: Using 'autocutsel -fork &' in my .xinitrc i copy "test1" using
the mouse selection and https://bbs.archlinux.org/ using a right
click+copy on firefox from the Arch homepage.

Heres what cutsel reports:

$ cutsel -s CLIPBOARD cut
https://bbs.archlinux.org/
$ cutsel -s CLIPBOARD sel
https://bbs.archlinux.org/
$ cutsel -s PRIMARY cut
https://bbs.archlinux.org/
$ cutsel -s PRIMARY sel
test1

Testcase B: Using 'autocutsel -selection PRIMARY -fork &' in my .xinitrc
i copy "test2" using the mouse selection and https://bbs.archlinux.org/
using a right click+copy on firefox from the Arch homepage.

Heres what cutsel reports:

$ cutsel -s CLIPBOARD cut
test2
$ cutsel -s CLIPBOARD sel
https://bbs.archlinux.org/
$ cutsel -s PRIMARY cut
test2
$ cutsel -s PRIMARY sel
test2

Testcase C: Using both 'autocutsel -fork &' as well as 'autocutsel
-selection PRIMARY -fork &' in my .xinitrc i copy "test3" using the
mouse selection and https://bbs.archlinux.org/ using a right click+copy
on firefox from the Arch homepage.

Heres what cutsel reports:

$ cutsel -s CLIPBOARD cut
test3
$ cutsel -s CLIPBOARD sel
test3
$ cutsel -s PRIMARY cut
test3
$ cutsel -s PRIMARY sel
test3

Which is *mandatory* now for users who have installed the autocutsel
package from [community]? The worst possible one, testcase C.
Like Heiko said you lose the advantage of the 'second clipboard'.

PS. This shows one of the reasons i recently opened a feature request
in the bug tracker asking to give some emphasis on documentation
distributed with packages in general.
The wiki is a very good resource but it isn't always right and its
certainly not a comprehensive resource of knowledge.

----
Greg