[Bug 11334] Re: MASTER Copy-Paste doesn't work if the source is closed before the paste

[pyrates]

Welcome Sarah.  If you read the comments here, I don't think people want
it fixed on a per application basis.  Linux developers coming from
windows and mac os x, don't want to have to put in extra work on linux
just to get the clipboard working with their app.  They want it taken
care of for them.

What they would like is for it to be fixed in Xorg.  The amount of time
that it takes to transfer data from the hard drive to memory is almost
negligible.  The excuse that it saves time may have been true in 1993,
but that is no longer the case.

If you want an overview on what's wrong with the clipboard that gives
more detail then the Ubuntu wiki has, read here:

http://elliotth.blogspot.com/2008/08/desktop-linux-suckage-
clipboard.html

Now in terms of implementing, a number of things should be accomplished:

1.  Retain clipboard data in Xorg itself.  This fixes the problem in all DE's.
2.  Identify the type of data stored in the clipboard so that a program expecting text and gets another type like part of an mp3, knows to ignore it.
3.  Reserve shortcuts like ctrl+c cltrl+v and ctrl+x for the clipboard by default.  Allow programs to override them if they wish.  IE a terminal app.
4.  Remove the right click as paste method and selection copy method.  But once again allow programs to implement them if they wish.
5.  When it's an actual file or directory, store the file location or directory location only but identify the data type as a file.  As this would be too big to store in the clipboard.  This we know won't go away easily since the shell is constantly running.
6.  If a program exits and was holding a large amount of data in the clipboard, ask the user if they wish to remove it from the clipboard up on exit.
7.  There should be 3 data types for the clipboard at minimum.  1st is text, 2nd data, and 3rd a file or directory.  The 2nd one, data, could be broke down further.  For example copying data from a program for audio might be in a format that only that program supports.  So each program would have to specify the kinds of data from the clipboard it could accept.  This way if you try to paste a data type from the clipboard that the current program doesn't recognize, it can simply ignore it.

That's all I can think of for now.

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MASTER Copy-Paste doesn't work if the source is closed before the paste
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/11334
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