Re: Some questions - before I get too far ... :)

> Marek Bajon wrote:
> > 3. Copy selected area to "clipboard"
> > Here is a question mark - what clipboard to use? I decided to use a file
> > called .tn5250sel in user's home directory. This allow to share the
> > clipboard with all tn5250 sessions of the user. What you think? A second
> > step would be inserting our selection to X clipboard to allow pasting to
> > other apps.
>
> Just copy it to the X "clipboard" so clicking with the middle mouse
> button in any app works fine.  IOW, highlight with left button in one
> app and click with middle button in another should copy whatever was
> highlighted into the second app.  Don't break people's expectations.
> Don't require pressing any keys.  Don't make it like MS windows.

Ok, i'll follow both X and MS "traditions" - in my company users were using
Client Access before, so they used to Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V.
I think that having internal clipboard as a file in user's home dir is also
good idea, because it will allow copy-paste in console version (tn5250
without xterm).

> It
> already works, so I'm not sure what you're changing?  Maybe just what
> can be selected?
>

Sorry, I forgot that you guys don't know that I'm talking about selecting
rectangular region. This is much different from what xterm offers.

> > 4. Paste copied selection
> > Pasting of previously copied rectangular region is possible at cursor's
> > position. If pasted data fells out of editable field - it is dropped.
>
> How is this different than how it already works besides dropping data
> that doesn't fit?  Do we want to drop data that doesn't fit?
>
Current (xterm based) copy-paste doesnt work if you copy multiple lines and
you have more than one field in a line. Droping data in not a good thing,
but it is necessary to paste sellection containing more than one field.
Imagine example:

description01__field01__field02
field03________field04__field05

We have two-line selection containing five editable fields, one display only
field (description01) and some blanks (showed as underscores). If you copy
this selection and try to paste it on another instance of xt5250, you will
get an error if you start pasting with cursor on description01, or you will
paste description01 to field01 if you place cursor in field01.

If we implement dropping data which cannot be pasted, we can successfuly
paste the selection if we start pasting with cursor at first character of
description01. Of course if starting position of cursor is different,
results are also different, but user should know what he's doing.

This copy-paste concept is not my "revelation" but it's how Client Access
does it.