Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!milano!titan!janssen@titan.sw.mcc.com From: janssen@titan.sw.mcc.com (Bill Janssen) Newsgroups: comp.windows.misc Subject: Re: Cut-and-paste (was Re: sharedx and remote conferencing) Message-ID: <1060@titan.SW.MCC.COM> Date: 19 Aug 88 02:32:17 GMT References: <5411@eagle.ukc.ac.uk> <5442@eagle.ukc.ac.uk> <567@motsj1.UUCP> <5450@eagle.ukc.ac.uk> <532@ashton.UUCP> Sender: janssen@titan.SW.MCC.COM Reply-To: janssen@mcc.com (Bill Janssen) Organization: MCC Software Technology Lines: 22 In-reply-to: dwiggins@ashtate (Don Dwiggins) I doubt that the window system has to know about the actual format, though it might know that the data stored in a "cut-buffer" is stored in some one of various available formats, and be able to say which format that is to another application that asks. `Andrew' data-objects have a nice protocol for this; you can cut data from the editor running under one UNIX process and paste it, including all styles and imbedded objects, into a different incarnation of the editor in different UNIX process. It would be nice to support some standard semantics for different kinds of cuts. For example, it would be nifty to be able to `pick up' an object in one application and `drop' it into another application. Presumably this would involve a pointer-grab, changing the pointer cursor EVERYWHERE, and sending an event to the application under the pointer when the button is released, saying something like "An object of type FOO has been passed to you from application BAR, here's the data: ..." or "data is in cut-buffer 3" or some such. Bill -- Bill Janssen, MCC Software Technology Program ARPA: janssen@mcc.com UUCP: {seismo,harvard,gatech,pyramid}!ut-sally!im4u!milano!janssen