GNU bug report logs - #6774
Cut and paste with C-w/mouse-2 not working?

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Package: emacs;

Reported by: Angelo Graziosi <angelo.graziosi <at> alice.it>

Date: Sun, 1 Aug 2010 22:04:02 UTC

Severity: normal

Done: Chong Yidong <cyd <at> stupidchicken.com>

Bug is archived. No further changes may be made.

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Message #101 received at 6774 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: David De La Harpe Golden <david <at> harpegolden.net>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Cc: cyd <at> stupidchicken.com, Stefan Monnier <monnier <at> iro.umontreal.ca>,
	6774 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, angelo.graziosi <at> alice.it
Subject: Re: bug#6774: Cut and paste with C-w/mouse-2 not working?
Date: Fri, 06 Aug 2010 21:17:53 +0100
On 06/08/10 11:50, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> From: Stefan Monnier<monnier <at> iro.umontreal.ca>
>> Cc: David De La Harpe Golden<david <at> harpegolden.net>,  cyd <at> stupidchicken.com,  6774 <at> debbugs.gnu.org,  angelo.graziosi <at> alice.it
>> Date: Fri, 06 Aug 2010 11:13:50 +0200
>>
>>> But that would mean setting the selection each time the user does a
>>> C-w or M-w or any other action that pushes text on the kill ring,
>>> won't it?
>>
>> Isn't that what Emacs has been doing for the last 10 years?
>
> Not as far as I know.  Maybe I was living in some pipe dream, but I
> always thought the actual copying happened only when some other
> application actually requests the selection.

I was talking about a second level of intra-emacs laziness that exists 
in the present select-active-regions implementation, not 
inter-application stuff.

See, on X11 you can x-set-selection the _emacs-level_ selection (stored 
internally on selection_alist) to a non-string value that merely 
references a buffer, so that when/if another application requests the 
selection, it is looked up all the way back to a buffer (or cons of 
markers).  The current select-active-regions implementation works that 
way, and thereby avoids an emacs-internal string copy sometimes (in 
cases like C-w/M-w that internal copy happens anyway).

My proposal was to consider that a premature optimization, go back to 
basics, then re-optimise by reintroducing some emacs-internal laziness 
in a more controlled fashion.




This bug report was last modified 14 years and 342 days ago.

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