Chris Palmer wrote: Probably harmless. It isn't. Whereas Windows (and presumably MacOS) has a concept of "the clipboard", X has a potentially unlimited number of "selections". Of these, two are commonly used. The "primary selection" generally corresponds to the highlighted text; this is the data which will normally be pasted when pressing the middle mouse button. You can bind a key to this operation with e.g.: (define-key global-map '(meta insert) 'x-insert-selection) This will allow you to paste the primary selection with Meta-Insert ("Meta" is probably going to be labelled with "Alt" or that four-leaf-clover shape; it's whatever key you have to use for "M-x"). The "clipboard" is a separate selection which behaves like the Windows clipboard. You have to explicitly cut or copy data to the clipboard before you can paste it. In XEmacs, Ctrl-Insert copies the highlighted text to the clipboard ("copy"), while Shift-Insert pastes the contents of the clipboard ("paste"). You can bind a key to the "cut" operation with e.g.: (define-key global-map '(shift delete) 'kill-primary-selection) As well as those, XEmacs has the "kill ring". This is internal to XEmacs, although the default is to make some attempt at keeping it synchronised with the clipboard. The kill ring is manipulated with Ctrl-w, Meta-w and Ctrl-y (cut, copy, paste, respectively). Among X applications, most support the primary selection; some also support the clipboard. In all probability, the X primary selection and clipboard will be completely independent of the MacOS selection and/or clipboard unless there is some utility which specifically synchronises the two. -- Glynn Clements <glynn.clements(a)virgin.net&gt;

Chris> The only things of interest are a few mild compiler Chris> warnings ("function declaration isn't a prototype", et Chris> c.). How seriously do you all take those? Some projects go Chris> on a mission to get completely clean compiler output, and Chris> other projects don't consider it a high priority. We do _want_ zero warnings from XEmacs code, but we will not perjure ourselves or pervert our code to get it. The warnings currently issued in 21.4 builds fall into two categories: broken system headers, which we will suppress if it doesn't involve muddying the XEmacs code, and warnings where I personally don't understand the code in question, and so was unwilling to apply "obvious" shut-up-the-compiler casts. The "function declaration isn't a prototype" errors all come from X11 headers, I believe. Chris> 3. When I do a text copy in an OS X app like Terminal and Chris> then try to paste into XEmacs with C-y, the minibuffer Chris> says: Chris> Selection conversion error: no selection, CLIPBOARD Chris> Finally, I DO get the expected results when I paste into Chris> XEmacs using the mouse instead of C-y. As Glynn explained, this is because X11 has several selections. I hate the MS Windows/Motif(/MacOS?) model; if I select text with a mouse gesture, I want to paste it immediately with a mouse gesture, or explicitly copy it to the clipboard. I don't want random selections on the clipboard (or in the *Emacs kill ring). Ie, I agree with the implementor of the XEmacs model: http://www.jwz.org/doc/x-cut-and-paste.html Presumably what is happening is that these other applications are using the PRIMARY selection, which gets pasted by mouse gestures by default in XEmacs. In XEmacs, the kill-ring is synchronized to the CLIPBOARD selection, thus the message you see above. (Except that it looks like something -- not necessarily Terminal! -- is asserting ownership of the CLIPBOARD selection, then refusing to convert it, which is weird.) Chris> Glynn Clements writes: Here I disagree with Glynn. I think users would revolt against any nested X server which didn't "gateway" the selections between itself and the host window system. (I doubt Xnest itself does that, but that's kind of a special case.) Chris> GNU Emacs in X behaves the way I would expect: C-y and Chris> middle mouse button both paste whatever was most recently Chris> copied, regardless of whether it was copied from a Mac app Chris> or an X app. GNU agrees with you that selection and copying are the same thing. See jamie's semi-rant referred to above. Possibly all you need is to customize `interprogram-paste-function' to `get-selection-foreign' (the default is `get-clipboard-foreign'). Untested; it's against my religion. :-) -- Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN Ask not how you can "do" free software business; ask what your business can "do for" free software.