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

[Grigorios Bouzakis]

Grigorios Bouzakis <grbzks at xsmail.com> wrote:
> 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'.
>

Apologies, for the use of mandatory above, it is a bit exaggerated.
It is now the default and mandatory only for users who don't have write
access to /etc.
Its also far from the UNIX standard but behaviour found in other
operating systems.

> 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.