GNU bug report logs - #3468
Support drag and drop of text on MS Windows

Previous Next

Full log

View this message in rfc822 format

From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi <at> gnus.org>
Cc: 3468 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, Erdkern2000 <at> gmx.de
Subject: bug#3468: drag and drop text
Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2019 18:49:57 +0300

> From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi <at> gnus.org>
> Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2019 17:29:54 +0200
> Cc: 3468 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
> 
> I tried this in Emacs 27, but on GNU/Linux, and it worked fine for me
> there.  Are you still seeing this problem?

Emacs on MS-Windows doesn't support drag-n-drop of arbitrary text, it
only supports drag-n-drop of file names.  This is indicated by the
"you can't do that" icon shown as the mouse pointer when you attempt
to drop the text onto the Emacs frame.

The Emacs User manual says in "Drag and Drop":

     The XDND and Motif drag and drop protocols, and the old KDE 1.x
  protocol, are currently supported.

which doesn't include any MS-Windows protocols.

The reason for not supporting this on MS-Windows is that the relevant
system APIs are only available for C++ programs.  If someone knows how
to work around this limitation, I'm sure we will welcome patches or at
least an explanation for how to do that in plain C.

Previous Next

GNU bug tracking system
Copyright (C) 1999 Darren O. Benham, 1997,2003 nCipher Corporation Ltd, 1994-97 Ian Jackson.