bug#1765: Copy/paste inconsistent with other X apps

[Sven Joachim]

On 2009-01-04 04:33 +0100, Chong Yidong wrote:

>> In every other recent X app I have tried, copy/pasting works the way
>> that the mouse selection = copy and middle click = paste is seperate
>> from the C-c/C-v clipboard.  I think it makes sense to change the
>> Emacs behaviour to make it a good citizen in the free desktop. And
>> it's arguably also more likely to prevent loss of clips.
>
> Set x-select-enable-clipboard to t.
>
> (We might consider making this the default after the release.  ISTR
> there was a technical reason not to do this, but details elude me right
> now.  Maybe it's a matter of speed?)

I don't think it's a matter of speed (I set x-select-enable-clipboard to
t long ago, and there are no noticeable delays), but rather the problems
that occur with pasting text from "legacy" applications like xterm that
only use the primary selection.  See
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2007-09/msg02462.html.

Note that Emacs doesn't quite DTRT no matter what the value of
x-select-enable-clipboard is.  This report in Debian's BTS sums it up
quite nicely: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=416462.

Sven