3.3.5: Solaris7&8, cut/paste buffers not working

Tue Dec 10 23:14:00 2002

Grant,

many thanks for looking into this. Here is where I am currently at ..

using 3.3.5 server on my Unix box (Solaris8, CDE)
Running autocutsel version 06

Cut/paste between PC-Unix-PC works perfectly from PC to Unix, but is very intermittent going the other way (Unix -> PC). However I can get around this by cut and pasting something from PC to Unix, then cut/paste from Unix works again. Very, very tedious but better than having no cut/paste functionality at all.

The plan,
at a convenient point I want to shut down my 3.3.5 server and install 3.3.6. Also I want to switch to using a xstartup configuration I got from a recent email posted by Charles Hines to this mailing list.

A quick test the other day on another Solaris8 machine suggests this xstartup, with autocutsel may work.

Here is the xstartup I am planning to use ..

#!/bin/sh

xrdb $HOME/.Xresources
xsetroot -solid grey
#xterm -geometry 80x24+10+10 -ls -title "$VNCDESKTOP Desktop" &
#dtwm &
#/usr/dt/bin/Xsession &
dtsession &

I will let you know how I get on. Please don't spend any time modifying a version of 'x2vnc' for me, although it is very kind of you to offer.

I must say that as great as VNC is, I have been surprised by lack of proper cut/paste support, or at least with my Solaris8/CDE setup. This can't be an uncommon setup for people to use these days can it? I suppose this is why Michael Witrant created autocutsel, unfortunately when I had to migrate from Solaris 2.5 to 2.8 autocustsel stopped working reliably.

regards,

Kevin

-----Original Message-----
From: Grant McDorman [mailto:grant.mcdorman@cedara.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, December 10, 2002 2:42 PM
To: Kevin Minney; vnc-list@realvnc.com
Subject: Re: 3.3.5: Solaris7&8, cut/paste buffers not working

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

I finally got around to looking into this. While I am not running CDE, I did 
use one of the CDE apps (dtpad) to investigate this.

To understand what is going on, you need to know that X (including the Xvnc) 
has two copy and paste mechanisms: the cut buffer, and the selection 
mechanism. In addition, the selection mechanism can support multiple copy and 
paste buffers.

Most modern applications, including CDE and KDE, use only the selection 
mechanism.

With VNC, there are two problems:
  1) The VNC Server (Xvnc) cannot set the 'selection' mechanism used by CDE 
(and others) for the copy and paste buffer; it can only set the cut buffer.
  2) CDE uses the selection name of 'CLIPBOARD'; the VNC viewer uses the name 
'PRIMARY'. CDE does not use the cut buffer at all.

What this means is that for your configuration (where you are viewing a VNC 
server), at least, there currently is no solution outside of 'autocutsel'. It 
may be possible to have some sort of VNC-specific helper app, but regardless 
one will need to run a helper app of some sort. This helper application could 
be a pure X application (like 'autocutsel') or a VNC client (based on x2vnc, 
for example).

For the viewer, by the way, one could modify the source to use the 'CLIPBOARD' 
selection instead of (or as well as) the 'PRIMARY' selection.

If you want a modified version of 'x2vnc' that just transfers the copy and 
paste buffer, I can do that for you.

On November 19, 2002 11:51 am, Kevin Minney wrote:
> Can someone please help me with this cut/paste buffer problem? Is it
> something unique to my setup, has anyone seen this problem before?
>
> thanks,
>
> Kevin
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kevin Minney
> Sent: Tuesday, November 12, 2002 2:29 PM
> To: vnc-list@realvnc.com
> Subject: 3.3.5: Solaris7&8, cut/paste buffers not working
>
>
> Hi,
>
> first of all, many thanks to all of you that helped debug my first problem,
> that of needing to use 8bit mode to get the server to start.
>
>
> Now I have the server running it is working as well as the old 3.3.2r2
> version and I am back to trying to sort out the problem of the cut/paste
> buffers not working. This problem is nothing new, up till now I have had to
> use Autocutsel to facilitate the cut/paste buffers but this doesn't work
> reliably (although it is much better than not having it at all).
>
> My problems with cut/paste started when I had to modify my xstartup file to
> get vncserver to run correctly on Solaris7 platform. My xstartup file has
> the 'dtwm &' line commented out, instead I use '/usr/dt/bin/Xsession &'.
>
> I made this change some time ago when I migrated my server onto a solaris7
> machine. With this setting my CDE windows look reasonable, all the buttons
> work, the colors look ok. The downside to using this sort of configuration
> is that the native cut/paste support in VNC no longer works (or at least
> not for me).
>
> Are there any users out there using a similar setup (i.e.
> '/usr/dt/bin/Xsession &' in their xstartup) that have got the cut/paste
> buffers to work without the need to have autocutsel running in the
> background?
>
> thanks in advance,
>
> Kevin
> _______________________________________________
> VNC-List mailing list
> VNC-List@realvnc.com
> http://www.realvnc.com/mailman/listinfo/vnc-list
> _______________________________________________
> VNC-List mailing list
> VNC-List@realvnc.com
> http://www.realvnc.com/mailman/listinfo/vnc-list

- -- 

Grant McDorman <grant.mcdorman@cedara.com>, Sr. Software Design Consultant
Cedara Software Corp.  <URL:http://www.cedara.com>
  (formerly I.S.G. Technologies Inc.)
Mississauga, Ontario, Canada

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.0 (SunOS)

iD8DBQE99m2fLVa+EmyjizARAnfaAJ4pCFPZoPxHZB46V55+UHZb9m83vgCfbfq9
dTMF6jiOPhlcfM6l0+MHRgY=
=2zyz
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----