Bug#588785: xterm: consider supporting freedesktop.org style clipboard behavior

[Timo Juhani Lindfors <timo.lindfors@iki.fi>]

Package: xterm
Version: 261-1
Severity: wishlist

This is a wishlist bug. I was not able to locate upstream bug tracker
so I'm filing it here instead, please forward if appropriate.

I wish that xterm could be configured to support freedesktop.org style
clipboard behavior. For example I'd like to be able to do the
following:

1) select text using mouse
2) hit ctrl-shift-c
3) hit ctrl-shift-v

with the following expected results:

2) selected text is added to clipboard (not only primary selection)
3) contents of clipboard is sent as input to the application running
under xterm


I can implement step 3 with

XTerm*VT100.Translations: #override\n\
 Shift Ctrl <KeyPress> v:insert-selection(CLIPBOARD)

in ~/.Xresources.

However, step 2 seems to be tricky to implement currently. I tried

XTerm*VT100.Translations: #override\n\
 Shift Ctrl <KeyPress> v:insert-selection(CLIPBOARD)\n\
 Shift<Btn1Down>:select-start()\n\
 Shift<Btn1Motion>:select-extend()\n\
 Shift<Btn1Up>:select-end(CLIPBOARD)\n

which is almost what I want. The problem is that it overwrites the
contents of clipboard too early, it should wait for me to press
ctrl-shift-c. Since it does not do this it is very easy to
accidentally destroy contents of clipboard by selecting some
text. Especially on a touchscreen it is very easy to accidentally
select text.

Would it be possible to add some sort of "copy contents of primary
selection to clipboard" command to xterm so that I could bind it to
ctrl-shift-c?


-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.30-2-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=fi_FI (charmap=ISO-8859-1)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages xterm depends on:
ii  libc6                     2.11.2-2       Embedded GNU C Library: Shared lib
ii  libfontconfig1            2.8.0-2.1      generic font configuration library
ii  libice6                   2:1.0.6-1      X11 Inter-Client Exchange library
ii  libncurses5               5.7+20100313-2 shared libraries for terminal hand
ii  libutempter0              1.1.5-3        A privileged helper for utmp/wtmp 
ii  libx11-6                  2:1.3.3-3      X11 client-side library
ii  libxaw7                   2:1.0.7-1      X11 Athena Widget library
ii  libxft2                   2.1.14-2       FreeType-based font drawing librar
ii  libxmu6                   2:1.0.5-1      X11 miscellaneous utility library
ii  libxt6                    1:1.0.7-1      X11 toolkit intrinsics library
ii  xbitmaps                  1.1.0-1        Base X bitmaps

Versions of packages xterm recommends:
ii  x11-utils                     7.5+4      X11 utilities
ii  xutils                        1:7.5+6    X Window System utility programs m

Versions of packages xterm suggests:
pn  xfonts-cyrillic               <none>     (no description available)

-- no debconf information