no copy/paste in xfce4 between Firefox and other X apps

[caljoe]

I'm using Xfce4 with a 2.6.7 kernel and Mozilla Firefox 0.9.

If I copy some text in a shell or in emacs, I can't paste it in Firefox form areas.

On the contrary, text copied inside Firefox can be pasted into shell by middle-clicking.

Anybody had this kind of behaviour? I'm curious to know if someone knows a solution to this. Is this a bug?

joe -

[30726]

Check this out. If you're too lazy to read it, terminals like aterm uses the primary selection, and that content can be pasted by using the middle mouse button. If you use the clipboard selection in an applications (right click, copy), you can't paste that into an terminal that doesn't support the clipboard selection. So in order to copy and paste text into terminals like aterm, you can only use the primary selection (select text to copy, middle click mouse to paste).

[caljoe]

thanks for the reference

so if I understand well, firefox exclusively uses the clipboard whereas my xterm uses the primary selection.

The question is: how do I copy some text from a xterm (or an aterm) into the primary selection?

I tried to look into the menus of xterm (those that appear with Ctl+Click), but I don't see anything like a good old 'copy' option...

this is pretty annoying when copy/pasting some logs or code on a forum like this one...

joe -

[30726]

You almost got it right. XTerm only uses the primary selection, while Firefox can use both. However, since you can only copy text from XTerm into the primary selection, you need to paste it from the primary selection into Firefox as well. The two selections are completely separate, so don't confuse the two.

The only way to copy something in XTerm to Firefox, is to select it with the mouse, and then middle click with the mouse to paste it in Firefox.

[caljoe]

Got it!

Thanks!!!!

(it will be much more easy now than rewriting the whole text.... )

[30726]

Dunno if I was clear or not, but here's a more simplified answer.

If you select the text in this post in Firefox, you have already copied it into the primary selection (which XTerm uses). If you select it and select copy from the menu (or Ctrl+c like in Windows), it goes into the clipboard selection (which XTerm can't see, but most if not all GUI apps can use by simply selecting paste from the menu or using Ctrl+v like in Windows).

EDIT:

[caljoe]