Bug 50471

the currently selected text is copied into the _selection_, only stuff 
that you Copy explitictly is put in the clipboard. Exception: you asked 
klipper to put every selection in clipboard automaticly. 

What you call the selection is what I called X-clipboard. We are talking   
about the same thing. On entering a number of entry dialogs the   
X-clipboard is automatically overwritten. We seem to agree on the current  
behavior. I just posted this bug to point out that this is incorrect in the  
cases I stated.  
   
It seems you find the useage as being correct now; then I am wondering  
how I must use the clipboard/selection to copy text from a konsole and  
paste it in the konqueror toolbar?  
  
Historically the x-clipboard has always been set on selection of content.  
The automatic selection of content by simply _entering_ the widget is 
something that has never happened, and has only started to appear when 
KDE copied the automatic selection on entry from Windows. 
 
This new feature makes the usage of the X clipboard useless in most 
cases, so adding the 'select-on-entry' feature kills the 'x-clipboard' 
feature-s usefullness. 
 
My point is simple, by saying that the selection should only be filled from a 
user-made selection we use the spirit of both features and restore peace 
in unix-clipboard land :) 
 
Please don't copy selections to the X-clipboard on automatic-selections. 
 

at first: alt-o does nothing but entering a o in konqueror's location bar 
second: qt does that. Freel free to do bug qt-bugs@trolltech.com 

 Reassigning to kde/clipboard, it's part of the problem discussed recently on kde-core-devel@. 
 
 Just out of interest, how exactly do you suggest fixing this problem? 
a) keep autoselecting in lineedits, but not copying to PRIMARY (=X-clipboard) in such case => 
people will complain that there are several texts selected, and it's not obvious what will MMB 
paste (or, if the previous text will be unselected, they will complain that MMB pastes something 
else than what's shown as the selected text) 
b) don't autoselect in lineedits => people will complain they have to clear the lineedit first 
c) I'd be interested in hearing proposals for solution c) 
 

 #43418 is a dupe of this. 
 

My suggestion;     
> a) keep autoselecting in lineedits, but not copying to PRIMARY (=X-clipboard)     
> people will complain that there are several texts selected.. what will MMB paste 
 
This I can answer best with an example. 
Imagine I have 2 apps open. I select something in app A, then go to app B and select 
something there.  When opening a thirth app I have 2 selections on screen (one from A, 
one from B). Which one will be pasted? 
It turns out everyone (here at the office) agrees that the last selected one is the one 
that should be pasted. 
The ironic part is that nobody expected the auto-selected text to be pasted. I got 
questioning faces here when they tried KDE3 (most are still KDE2 users). 
The rule then is that everyone agrees the last manually-selected one is the one that 
should be pasted. 
 
Not copying on auto-select implements the spirit of the old X-selections clipboard. 

> When opening a thirth app I have 2 selections on screen (one from A, one from B).   
   
 This is actually a bug. The old one should go away (well, at least according to the spirit of the   
old X-selections clipboard).   
  
> Not copying on auto-select implements the spirit of the old X-selections clipboard.  
  
 The spirit of the old X-selections clipboard is that the _only_ thing selected is the selection  
(=X-clipboard).  
  
 See http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=103614858823106&w=2 for the description 
of the "spirit of the old X-selections clipboard". As you can see, it's different from what you 
describe. And this whole thingy is not that simple. If it's changed according to you (=users who 
have their vision of X selection deformed by the way it used to work in KDE2 - yes, that's what 
we are), then people used to the "right" X11 behaviour as used e.g. in Gtk+ will complain. 
 
 Feel free to suggest a way how to handle this without having many people complaning. I 
haven't found it yet. 
 
 
 

I think solution b in comment #4 (don't autoselect) would be ok. Maybe it's not
an optimal solution, but it's much better than the current behaviour, which is
breaking an existing feature (copy-and-paste with the mouse).
And people complaining about having to clear the lineedit? IMHO that's not such
a big problem if you only prefill the lineedits when it's really necessary.
Examples:
- Create new dir/file in konqueror: The word "Directory" or "File" is prefilled.
Not necessary, an empty dialog would be enough.
- Ctrl-F (find) in text editor or konqueror: No need to prefill anything, too.
In other cases, like saving files, the prefilled filename is needed, which may
be inconvenient in some cases. But other non-KDE applications (Mozilla,
OpenOffice) handle it the same way: Prefilled but not selected.

The bad behavior seems to be fixed in recent CVS.