Custom selections (in respect to ICCCM 2.6.1)

[schrmh]

Currently, xclip only allows to copy to and paste from the three standard selections.
However, ICCCM 2.6.1 mentions that more selections can exist:

There can be an arbitrary number of selections, each named by an atom. To conform with the inter-client conventions, however, clients need deal with only these three selections:

PRIMARY
SECONDARY
CLIPBOARD

Other selections may be used freely for private communication among related groups of clients.

(https://tronche.com/gui/x/icccm/sec-2.html#s-2.6.1)

I wish for xclip to support selections of custom names.

This blog post might help a bit:
https://www.uninformativ.de/blog/postings/2017-04-02/0/POSTING-en.html

[quartzjer]

Hi @schrmh! Would you be interested in making a PR to help support this?

[schrmh]

Hey, thanks for asking. But likely not in the near future at least. Jer Miller ***@***.***> schrieb am Fr., 27. Dez. 2024, 19:28:

…

Hi @schrmh <https://github.com/schrmh>! Would you be interested in making a PR to help support this? — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#143 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AHUTYED7CBMBABVZIAU3ZGD2HWL4FAVCNFSM6AAAAABUI6N4VGVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDKNRTHEZTKOBXGI> . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[quartzjer]

I'm going to close this for now, ideally someone who wants/needs this capability will be able to contribute in the future, thanks!

[schrmh]

I would rather see a low-priority tag instead of closing of a feature request but well. Jer Miller ***@***.***> schrieb am Mo., 30. Dez. 2024, 21:51:

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I'm going to close this for now, ideally someone who wants/needs this capability will be able to contribute in the future, thanks! — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#143 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AHUTYEBJDIE3QWDEHZPFWKL2IGW4HAVCNFSM6AAAAABUI6N4VGVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDKNRVHEYDIMRQG4> . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[hackerb9]

I've created a "low priority" tag so that issues like this can have a central place to be tracked and will be found easily by people who want to contribute a patch in the future.

[hackerb9]

By the way, I may have written the code to do custom selections at some point in the past as it sounds familiar. If I come across it, I'll update this issue.

[gklanderman]

I have a local change that allows -selection to support arbitrary atoms starting with underscore. it's a very tiny patch but I'd need to add some documentation to it..

requiring the atoms to start with underscore seemed like not a meaningful limitation, and a way to still have a useful error message if you typo one of the standard selection names.

[gklanderman]

@hackerb9 see issue #75 where you previously suggested supporting arbitrary selection names.