On Wed, 31 May 2006 14:36:55 -0500, Les Mikesell lesmikesell@gmail.com opined:
On Wed, 2006-05-31 at 11:54 -0700, Gordon Messmer wrote:
And here's a statement that you probably never thought you'd see: The best explanation of this that I've seen was a slashdot comment. http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=109755&cid=9319130
So, basically, there are two clipboards in X. If you select text with the mouse, you can paste it with the middle button. If you use the "copy" menu item (or ctrl+c), you can paste it with the "paste" menu item (or ctrl+v). As long as you don't try to mix the two, like expecting "paste" to insert something that you selected with the mouse, you should be fine.
That's a little confusing. Almost everywhere the keyboard versions of copy/paste work there is also a right-mouse menu that works the same way as the keyboard, so the distinction isn't between using the mouse and the keyboard, it is between using the clipboard or the selection. That is, anything selected will paste with the middle mouse (and I disagree with the slashdot article calling this the 'advanced' way - it is the basic X way), and things copied to the clipboard with either the right-mouse menu copy or the keyboard equivalent will paste with either the right-mouse menu or the keyboard equivalent. Since many applications need the keystrokes for something else, you'll have a lot fewer surprises if you use the right-mouse method most places. Also, if you use 'synergy' to let a single keyboard/mouse access multiple computers running different OS's, the right-mouse action usually work no matter where you are.
Add to that KDE's intervention with Klipper which can be configured to synchronize the contents of the clipboard and selection or provide a separate clipboard and selection. Neither provides results exactly as expected.