xwinclip: unable to paste INTO a highlighted area (linux -> linux and windows -> linux)

[Jay Smith]

Hi,

I know that "copy highlighting" has been discussed to death, but I have not 
found any recent references to the problem of, WITHIN LINUX or from WINDOWS 
TO LINUX, not being able to do a copy and *then* highlight an area and 
*paste* into the highlighted to *replace* the highlighted text.

If I copy/paste from Linux -> Windows95, it works properly, I can highlight 
source text and then highlight the target and paste into the target thus 
replacing the highlighted text in the target with the source text.

However, if I am copy/pasting between two LINUX applications, i.e. Mozilla 
Mail, anytime I highlight anything, that goes into the "buffer". If I 
highlight target text that I want to replace with source text I have 
copied, the source text that I originally copied is gone and instead the 
text in the target is in the buffer.

If I am copy/pasting from Windows95 -> Linux I also have the problem.

The bottom line is that for linux -> linux copy/paste, xwinclip *breaks* 
the copy/paste behavior in Linux. Without xwinclip, I can highlight target 
text and replace it with source text that I have copied by highlighting and 
doing a ctrl-c.

I find it odd that this problem has not *seemed* to get more attention. 95% 
of the copy/paste that I do involves a) copying source text, b) then 
highlighting another block of text (i.e the target), and c) pasting the 
copied source text into the highlighted target.

Because of this problem, I have to reverse the order of things (not 
natural) and delete the text in the target area before pasting into the 
target area.  If I am doing repeated pastes of the same content, perhaps 
into multiple documents, this is a huge pain.

I understand that xwinclip seems to use the concept that any text 
highlighted is automatically copied.  I suppose that the reason for this 
has to do with various applications using different ctrl and alt keystrokes 
for their own purposes.  For example, a ctrl-c in a kshell cancels the 
command line.

However, there really should be a way to deal with this problem.  Is there 
and I have just missed it?

Maybe if some ctrl-alt-shift, etc., key was held down while highlighting, 
that action would block xwinclip from putting the highlighted text into the 
buffer.

My environment is:

Windows 95 running Cygwin ....
    XFree86-base     4.2.0-1
           -lib      4.2.0-5
           -xserv    4.2.0-28 (that's what it says: 28)
           -xwinclip 4.2.0-8

I am using XDM to get to RedHat Linux 8 which has been kept up to date,
using up2date, to just BEFORE the point a couple weeks ago that they
screwed things up with the glib disaster.  (I feel like I have been
Microsoft'ed; my faith in RH has been devastated.)

Any ideas/suggestions or fixes?  If more environment info is needed, please
advise.

Jay

-- 
Jay Smith

e-mail: Jay@JaySmith.com  mailto:Jay@JaySmith.com
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