GTK clipboard problems

[Warren Togami]

Since around RH7.3, I remember gtk2 applications would sometimes be 
unable to copy & paste between each other after long runtimes within a 
GNOME session.  Sometimes it would take a week of using GNOME without 
relogging for this problem to manifest.  Copying from GTK2 to kedit and 
back to GTK2 would work, but not GTK2 to GTK2.  Select and middle-click 
would also fail.  Then *something* else I do on the desktop makes the 
behavior go away, and clipboard begins working properly again.

Today using FC3, I this problem still exists today.

Do other people experience this problem?

Is anyone aware of an upstream bug tracking this issue that has more 
substance than my useless description above?

Thanks,
Warren Togami
wtogami(a)redhat.com

[Behdad Esfahbod]

Yes, I can confirm this old very annoying bug.  I mainly use
gnome-terminal and epiphany, and I'm sure I have seen it in the
past month again.

On Wed, 1 Dec 2004, Warren Togami wrote:

>  Since around RH7.3, I remember gtk2 applications would sometimes be
>  unable to copy & paste between each other after long runtimes within a
>  GNOME session.  Sometimes it would take a week of using GNOME without
>  relogging for this problem to manifest.  Copying from GTK2 to kedit and
>  back to GTK2 would work, but not GTK2 to GTK2.  Select and middle-click
>  would also fail.  Then *something* else I do on the desktop makes the
>  behavior go away, and clipboard begins working properly again.
>
>  Today using FC3, I this problem still exists today.
>
>  Do other people experience this problem?
>
>  Is anyone aware of an upstream bug tracking this issue that has more
>  substance than my useless description above?
>
>  Thanks,
>  Warren Togami
>  wtogami(a)redhat.com
>
>  
--behdad
  behdad.org

[Kyrre Ness Sjobak]

ons, 01.12.2004 kl. 09.28 skrev Warren Togami:
>  Since around RH7.3, I remember gtk2 applications would sometimes be 
>  unable to copy & paste between each other after long runtimes within a 
>  GNOME session.  Sometimes it would take a week of using GNOME without 
>  relogging for this problem to manifest.  Copying from GTK2 to kedit and 
>  back to GTK2 would work, but not GTK2 to GTK2.  Select and middle-click 
>  would also fail.  Then *something* else I do on the desktop makes the 
>  behavior go away, and clipboard begins working properly again.
>  
>  Today using FC3, I this problem still exists today.
>  
>  Do other people experience this problem?
>  
>  Is anyone aware of an upstream bug tracking this issue that has more 
>  substance than my useless description above? 
I heard a friend mention something like this as well - and he also dug
out some information that the X clipboard isn't really copy-paste - its
select-paste. He discovered it after selecting a bunch of text, hitting
control+c, closing the program, and hitting control+v.

Turns out, closing the program wasn't such a good idea.

[Owen Taylor]

On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 22:28 -1000, Warren Togami wrote:
>  Since around RH7.3, I remember gtk2 applications would sometimes be 
>  unable to copy & paste between each other after long runtimes within a 
>  GNOME session.  Sometimes it would take a week of using GNOME without 
>  relogging for this problem to manifest.  Copying from GTK2 to kedit and 
>  back to GTK2 would work, but not GTK2 to GTK2.  Select and middle-click 
>  would also fail.  Then *something* else I do on the desktop makes the 
>  behavior go away, and clipboard begins working properly again.
>  
>  Today using FC3, I this problem still exists today.
>  
>  Do other people experience this problem?
>  
>  Is anyone aware of an upstream bug tracking this issue that has more 
>  substance than my useless description above? 
No, there is no upstream bug for this. (And I've never seen it (*))

If you track it down to something we'd have a prayer of debugging
(:-) please make sure to clearly distinguish

 - The clipboard
 - Middle button paste (primary selection)

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards_2fclipboards_2dspec

May be useful.

Regards,
						Owen

(*) I have a vague memory of years ago seeing middle button paste
    stop working for some reason and having to track that down
    (it wasn't a GTK+ bug). But no hope of remembering what
    it was at this point.

[Daniel Yek]

Hi,

On Wed, 2004-12-01 at 08:52, Owen Taylor wrote:

>  On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 22:28 -1000, Warren Togami wrote:
>  > Since around RH7.3, I remember gtk2 applications would sometimes be 
>  > unable to copy & paste between each other after long runtimes within a 
>  > GNOME session.   


>  (:-) please make sure to clearly distinguish
>  
>   - The clipboard
>   - Middle button paste (primary selection)
>  
>  http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards_2fclipboards_2dspec 

I'm wondering if there is a mechanism to disable the Middle-click
Pasting (the X Window System Primary Selection mechanism). It is a good
feature to be able to do that at a "global" desktop level (as opposed to
application level) because the concept of two pasting mechanisms isn't
very easy to grasp, especially for people who haven't read the protocol
specification at freedesktop.org or X Window System programming
documentation regarding atom Primary, Secondary, and Clipboard. (Those
were the documents in which I first encountered the Primary Selection
and Clipboard concept - not in a user manual or Tips of the Day.) The
Middle-click Pasting mechanism is easily discovered by novice users, but
at that point, there is no guide/documentation readily available for
users to be able to explore the use of it. Instead, users would stumble
through many unexpected behavior before concluding that cut-and-paste is
broken on this system (because there surely isn't any help available to
give them the correct concept that there are two mechanisms where
Middle-click pastes from Primary Selection - the high-light - and the
Clipboard mechanism requires explicit cutting/copying, not just
high-lighting.)

What can be done so that a global setting to enable/disable Middle-click
Pasting is available? Is these protocols implemented by individual
applications or is it implemented by the GTK toolkit? If it is the
later, a GConf setting for the entire desktop can be provided, right? Is
there such a thing already? If so, is a global setting already
available? And if so, should Middle-click Pasting default to disabled at
Fedora Core installation time?


-- 
Daniel.

[Owen Taylor]

On Sat, 2004-12-04 at 16:23 -0800, Daniel Yek wrote:
>  Hi,
>  
>  On Wed, 2004-12-01 at 08:52, Owen Taylor wrote: 
>  > On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 22:28 -1000, Warren Togami wrote:
>  > > Since around RH7.3, I remember gtk2 applications would sometimes be 
>  > > unable to copy & paste between each other after long runtimes within a 
>  > > GNOME session.  
>  
>  > (:-) please make sure to clearly distinguish
>  > 
>  >  - The clipboard
>  >  - Middle button paste (primary selection)
>  > 
>  > http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards_2fclipboards_2dspec
>  
>  I'm wondering if there is a mechanism to disable the Middle-click
>  Pasting (the X Window System Primary Selection mechanism). It is a
>  good feature to be able to do that at a "global" desktop level (as
>  opposed to application level) because the concept of two pasting
>  mechanisms isn't very easy to grasp, especially for people who haven't
>  read the protocol specification at freedesktop.org or X Window System
>  programming documentation regarding atom Primary, Secondary, and
>  Clipboard. (Those were the documents in which I first encountered the
>  Primary Selection and Clipboard concept - not in a user manual or Tips
>  of the Day.) The Middle-click Pasting mechanism is easily discovered
>  by novice users, but at that point, there is no guide/documentation
>  readily available for users to be able to explore the use of it.
>  Instead, users would stumble through many unexpected behavior before
>  concluding that cut-and! -paste is broken on this system (because
>  there surely isn't any help available to give them the correct concept
>  that there are two mechanisms where Middle-click pastes from Primary
>  Selection - the high-light - and the Clipboard mechanism requires
>  explicit cutting/copying, not just high-lighting.) 
My guess is that discovering middle button paste isn't something that
people do accidentally; rather it's something they are told about
by someone else. I'm not sure allowing a sysadmin to turn it off
on one set of machines is going to improve the user experience.

Regards,
						Owen