dtomm@sparcplug.us.oracle.com (Doug Tomm) (10/07/90)
I'm fuzzy on certain aspects of selections and interclient communication. How is it possible to make persistent the data associated with a property? Suppose I'm running a client which owns some selection. When it terminates, I would like it to bequeath the data in its (client-defined) properties so that I can get the data back when I restart the client and acquire ownership of the selection. Transferring ownership of the selection to the root window doesn't seem to work. Any ideas? I'm running X11R4 with *no* patches, using Xlib only (not my choice). -- ====================================================================== Doug Tomm Still with Oracle Corp. dtomm@oracle.com
rws@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU (Bob Scheifler) (10/07/90)
How is it possible to make persistent the data
associated with a property?
I assume you mean selection, not property. Selections are not persistent,
they are tied to the lifetime of the owner. They can be made "persistent"
by transferring them to a "persistent" owner. An example of this is the
CLIPBOARD mechanism, see the ICCCM for details. But this "persistence"
has its cost in reducing/eliminating the available dynamic type conversions.
Transferring ownership of the selection to the root window doesn't seem
to work.
Selections are owned by clients, not windows. (The merits of having a window
additionally associated with the selection can be debated.) In order to
"transfer to the root window", you would have to choose a representation and
store the data as a property on the root window, and then look for such a
property when restarting. Applications wanting to get "the selection" would
have to be coded to try a real selection and then fall back to a property.