Re: [bug #4658] Broken gpbs when doing pb operations between GS and X

[Kazunobu Kuriyama]

Thank you for the information.  If I knew it from the outset,
I could reply to you in a more appropriate manner.

It seems that gpbs is not broken (except the size limitation)
and even works fine for you if you use it with X apps it
supports.

The new copy and paste functionality of gpbs depends on whether
or not an X app in use can exchange string data together with the
atom UTF8_STRING. Unfortunately, Motif (and hence 'nedit') doesn't
support it.  Probably, a similar reason also holds true with
'ooffice', though I'm not sure if this applies to other applications
you mentioned by the phrase 'or whatever'.

If the binary of an X application you want to use or those of libraries
to which they are linked don't have any symbol such as Xutf8*, probably
you are out of luck; gpbs won't do copy and paste correctly together
with such applications.

If you rather like the previous versions of gpbs, do #undef the macro
X_HAVE_UTF8_STRING in xpbs.m just after #include <X11/Xlib.h>; then
the source code falls back to the original implementation.

Why doesn't the latest gpbs' cut and paste support your favorite
applications?  In case you are curious about the reasons, please
follow the recent discussion on gpbs which was done on this mailing
list mainly between Fred Kiefer, who predicted the case we are now
dealing with, and me just a few days ago. (They are too lengthy
to be quoted here.)

The freeze effect is seemingly due to a side-effect of improper
usage of gpbs (at least in your case).  I feel it would be better to
add some timeout mechanism to gpbs to prevent the user from having
such an unpleasant effect and to notify her/him of the fact that the
operation is not supported for an X application in question.

Cheers,
- Kazu
------

Stefan Urbanek wrote:

> On 2003-08-08 17:22:05 +0200 Kazunobu Kuriyama 
> <kazunobu.kuriyama@nifty.com> wrote:
>
> > O.K.  Because I'm not sure why gpbs doesn't work for you, could you 
> > please give
> > us more detailed information on the bug and the environment you use 
> > so that we can
> > reproduce the bug?
>
> ok, so:
>
> 1. delete /usr/GNUstep/System
> 2. fresh CVS checkout, as of 8.8.2003 23:00 CET
> 3. make install make, base, gui, back (without any patches)
> 4. ldconfig
>
> 5. launch GNUmail and some xapp (nedit or ooffice or whatever)
> 6. select text in GNUmail, copy it
> 7. x-paste in nedit -> does not work
>
> 8. open some file in nedit and select all
> 9. paste in GNUstep app -> previously copyied text in GNUstep is 
> pasted (should be X selection)
>
> 10. select something short in GNUstep and paste it in GNUstep ->works
>
> 11. select something short in X and paste it in GNUstep -> GNUstep app 
> freezes for several seconds (not because of gpbs crash, but because of 
> that failed operation)
>
> That's all i can say so far. Described behaviour was experienced now.
>
> Stefan