4 ms·

I wrote the original xterm patch for this mode, to help the mouse mode of Joe's Own Editor. There were related additional features that didn't catch on: A mod

I wrote the original xterm patch for this mode, to help the mouse mode of Joe's Own Editor. There were related additional features that didn't catch on: A mode where you could read or set the selection data with base64 quoted strings. This gives the application full control over its interaction with X's cut & paste buffers. For example, if you Shift-select some text, the application can tell X about it so that other applications can paste. I think there is still an xterm configure option for this one. The ability for the mouse to send motion events (when a mouse button is pressed) to the application even if it has gone beyond the terminal emulator's window border. It needs to be able to report negative coordinates when you are above or to the left of the window. This is needed to allow you to select text where the scrolling speed is controlled by how far beyond the border the mouse has moved. I still think this is needed, but patch not taken. Incidentally, JOE has a hack for terminal emulators that don't have bracketed paste. If a new input character is immediately available after the previous character, then assume we have pasted text instead of typed. This works surprisingly well since the communication links tends to keep contiguous writes together in a single buffer.

pmoriarty 8y ago
"A mode where you could read or set the selection data with base64 quoted strings. This gives the application full control over its interaction with X's cut & paste buffers. For example, if you Shift-select some text, the application can tell X about it so that other applications can paste. I think there is still an xterm configure option for this one." base64-encoded selection data sounds intriguing, but I'm not sure I understand what base64 has to do with the application being able to tell X about some text being selected. And doesn't X already know when some text has been selected, simply from the contents of the primary selection having changed?
- jhallenworld 8y ago
  Suppose you select text with the keyboard- in JOE you can do this by holding down Ctrl and repeatedly hit arrow keys (actually there are many ways to this- ^KB ^KK marking is another). In most editors for Windows you can do it by holding Shift and hit arrow keys. How is X supposed to know that you just made this selection? Normally it can not, because it's a tty/console application not in direct communication with the X server. The base64 selection feature allows a console application to do it: the program can send selection text to X any time it wants: it's some header, base64 text, and a trailer. When the terminal emulator receives this, it forwards it to the X server just as if you had done a mouse selection. The base64 is useful in the other direction (pasting into the terminal emulator running an editor). One minor advantage is that base64 is binary clean. Another is that the text is not just sent to the application- instead you get a sequence indicating that middle mouse button was pressed. The application then sends a request to the terminal emulator to have it send the paste data to the application. This is better because it allows you to paste by (for example) using an application specific keyboard sequence, not just a mouse action.
  - pmoriarty 8y ago
    Oh, I see. I was thinking of mouse selections, which (in Linux anyway) will instantly make whatever you selected with the mouse available to X. As to selecting text with the keyboard, Emacs at least does some magic to make copied text appear in the X primary selection. I personally find this more annoying than useful, as it clutters up my primary selection with random junk I've beeing editing in Emacs. So I personally prefer to only send the text to X when I deliberately call for it, by sending the text to the "xclip" utility as needed. It's possible to use the "xsel" utility as well. I'm not sure what is the advantage of putting the terminal in to the middle of this process. Why can't applications just send whatever text they want to X by using xclip or xsel? Pasting in to the terminal is another matter, of course, and I can understand the usefulness of being 8-bit clean and using base64.
    - jhallenworld 8y ago
      You might be ssh'd to another system, so xsel / xclip will not work.

pmoriarty 8y ago

"A mode where you could read or set the selection data with base64 quoted strings. This gives the application full control over its interaction with X's cut & paste buffers. For example, if you Shift-select some text, the application can tell X about it so that other applications can paste. I think there is still an xterm configure option for this one." base64-encoded selection data sounds intriguing, but I'm not sure I understand what base64 has to do with the application being able to tell X about some text being selected. And doesn't X already know when some text has been selected, simply from the contents of the primary selection having changed?

jhallenworld 8y ago
Suppose you select text with the keyboard- in JOE you can do this by holding down Ctrl and repeatedly hit arrow keys (actually there are many ways to this- ^KB ^KK marking is another). In most editors for Windows you can do it by holding Shift and hit arrow keys. How is X supposed to know that you just made this selection? Normally it can not, because it's a tty/console application not in direct communication with the X server. The base64 selection feature allows a console application to do it: the program can send selection text to X any time it wants: it's some header, base64 text, and a trailer. When the terminal emulator receives this, it forwards it to the X server just as if you had done a mouse selection. The base64 is useful in the other direction (pasting into the terminal emulator running an editor). One minor advantage is that base64 is binary clean. Another is that the text is not just sent to the application- instead you get a sequence indicating that middle mouse button was pressed. The application then sends a request to the terminal emulator to have it send the paste data to the application. This is better because it allows you to paste by (for example) using an application specific keyboard sequence, not just a mouse action.
- pmoriarty 8y ago
  Oh, I see. I was thinking of mouse selections, which (in Linux anyway) will instantly make whatever you selected with the mouse available to X. As to selecting text with the keyboard, Emacs at least does some magic to make copied text appear in the X primary selection. I personally find this more annoying than useful, as it clutters up my primary selection with random junk I've beeing editing in Emacs. So I personally prefer to only send the text to X when I deliberately call for it, by sending the text to the "xclip" utility as needed. It's possible to use the "xsel" utility as well. I'm not sure what is the advantage of putting the terminal in to the middle of this process. Why can't applications just send whatever text they want to X by using xclip or xsel? Pasting in to the terminal is another matter, of course, and I can understand the usefulness of being 8-bit clean and using base64.
  - jhallenworld 8y ago
    You might be ssh'd to another system, so xsel / xclip will not work.