Time to hang it up?
I use the clipboard all the time especially when I'm coding. Multiple terminals
each running a copy of vim.
I notice that many young programmers also use terminals and vim (or neovim) on
Macs. At least on videos of programming topics I'm interested in. Do they not
use the clipboard?
On a more philosophical note: I recall reading the X11 was all about capability
and not policy. People who design software nowadays seem to be all about policy
and not capability. This is how you should do things. F**k you if you don't get
it.
Very un-unix if you ask me. The one feature I love about unix is the countless
permutations one can use its command line utilities to solve problems. Feeds the
creative side of me, methinks. That's why I never got much into GUIs.
Oh well, the future belongs to the young. Maybe it is time to hang it up.
On 06/27/2017 08:05 AM, Tom H wrote:
On Tue, Jun 27, 2017 at 8:19 AM, Andrew C Aitchison
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Tue, 27 Jun 2017, Tom H wrote:
On Tue, Jun 20, 2017 at 4:38 PM, ToddAndMargo <[email protected]>
wrote:
I have been using UNIX and Linux for over 25 years and did not
realize X11 has four clipboards. I recently discovered the Secondary
Selection keyboard.
It really saves a bunch of time when I am programming as I don't
lose my cursor's hot spot.
Here is a great 8 minute video demonstrating all four clipboards. It
is must learn for anyone using Linux.
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl/Secondary-Selection.mp4
To support this clipboard, your program has to use the GTK Toolkit.
Thanks. I didn't know about this secondary clipboard. I've just tried
it on my laptop running Ubuntu 17.10 but it didn't work. I suspect
that it's been deep-sixed in Gnome Shell and Unity.
I was interested in the secondary clipboard too, and looked at
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl/secondary-selection.html which makes
clear that this is not a standard gtk feature; there are experimental
modified gtk3 libraries which support secondary selection (no source
yet).
gtk3 means it doesn't run on SL6, so I haven't been able to explore further.
The author of "Secondary-Selection.mp4" asked about it on the gtk
development list
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-devel-list/2016-August/msg00036.html
and the answer was
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-devel-list/2016-August/msg00037.html
Part of the response:
We still (optionally) support the PRIMARY selection on the X11 backend,
and some compatibility layer for it on Wayland, but we have no plans on
adding support for the SECONDARY selection, as it's both barely
specified and, like the PRIMARY, highly confusing for anybody who is not
well-versed in 20+ years of use of textual interfaces on the X Windows
System. Personally, I would have jettisoned the PRIMARY selection a long
time ago as well, but apparently a very vocal minority is still holding
tight to that particular Easter egg. Adding support for the even more
esoteric SECONDARY selection on the X11 backend when we're trying to
move the Linux world towards the more modern and less legacy-ridden
Wayland display system would be problematic to say the least, and an ill
fit for the majority of graphical user experiences in use these days.
