Suggestion for Xorg / about middle-mouse click pasting

[Dave Howorth]

On Fri, 31 Jul 2020 16:36:42 -0400
Adam Jackson <ajax at redhat.com> wrote:

> (accidentally sent to just sam initially, whoops)
> 
> On Fri, Jul 31, 2020 at 7:22 AM Sam Varshavchik
> <sam.varshavchik at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Fri, Jul 31, 2020 at 4:30 AM Böszörményi Zoltán <zboszor at pr.hu>
> > wrote:  
> > > 2020. 07. 30. 21:20 keltezéssel, Dennis Clarke írta:  
> > > > On 7/30/20 6:39 PM, Elie Goldman Smith wrote:  
> > > >> Countless people on forums ...  
> > > >
> > > > Also they are not the source code nor would I rely on what
> > > > countless people say on just about any matter whatsoever.  I am
> > > > not sure when the horrific "popular is correct" logic became
> > > > almost defacto pure truth but I reject it.  I am certain I am
> > > > not alone but I also do not have a mathematical proof handy to
> > > > refute the "popular is correct" notion.  At least not yet.  
> > >
> > > Let me suggest an analogue / convergent notion, which is also
> > > popular among engineers: "ten billion flies can't be wrong. let's
> > > eat sh*t" I am not sure this refutes the "popular is correct"
> > > logic but it certainly puts things into perspective.  
> >
> > That's somewhat besides the point. The point is that the server has
> > absolutely no control over this functionality. Anyone who actually
> > knows and understands X11 (and not some uncounted number of people
> > in some mysterious forums) will know that.
> >
> > If someone believes otherwise, they are free to download the source
> > to the Xorg server, make whatever the change they believe will
> > adjust that behavior, and prove everyone else wrong.  
> 
> Fine, I'm feeling contrarian:
> 
> https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/snippets/1127
> 
> The server _absolutely_ has control over this. The value of the
> PRIMARY property, from the requesting client's perspective, is
> whatever the server says it is. There's no reason the server needs to
> tell you the truth. I'm pretty sure you could craft selinux policy to
> do this and not even need to patch your server.
> 
> The point is: opinions about this are not universal. PRIMARY's
> behaviour is so thoroughly baked into both client software and a
> non-trivial subset of user expectation that anyone saying "obviously
> it should be turned off" is projecting. Likewise anyone who cut their
> teeth on a sun3 and thinks UI design was perfected with the Athena
> widget set is intentionally ignoring the absolutely massive
> popularization of access to computing since 1992.
> 
> Nobody needs a manifesto about this. If you want to improve the world
> here the quantity of code needed is really quite small. I would like
> to think the xorg developers are friendly and approachable enough that
> people would feel comfortable asking how to make these kinds of
> changes and where to start hacking. We've done tremendous amounts of
> work over the last 15-odd years to eliminate the irrelevant code and
> make what's left pleasant to work on. Please don't make me feel like
> that's been wasted effort.

That doesn't meet the requirements.

Obviously it doesn't allow for the option to be turned on or off,
although I expect it can be extended easily to allow that.

More seriously, it also prevents any other method of using the
selection from working, such as choosing cut and paste from a menu. So
it rather throws the baby out with the bathwater.

Which I would assert is an excellent demonstration of the point. It's
not the server which provides this functionality. Remember X's motto -
mechanism not policy.


> - ajax
> 
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