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X11 Secondary Selection (www.cs.man.ac.uk)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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The secondary-selection is used when the cursor is in some focussed Recipient window, in order to grab some text (or whatever) from some Donor window (possibly the same window as the Recipient) and have that text pasted at the Recipient's insertion-point (overwriting any primary-selection in the Recipient).

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[–] 1 point 10 months ago (1 child)

I assumed primary is ctrl-c/ctrl-v and secondary is select/middle-click. I've never come across this ctrl-middle-click, it does the same with and without the ctrl key.

I seen to recall reading something this week about a distro dropping middle click, so I probably conflated both issues and failed.

But you're right, I did not read the fine article.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 10 months ago

    There are lots of ways to move data between or within graphical windows! But the list is shrinking

    • clipboard - cltr-c / ctrl-v
    • drag and drop - mouse selection, mouse drag
    • primary - mouse selection -> middle click (or shift+ins); moves text cursor
    • secondary - ctrl+select (alt+select in emacs); secondary doesn't move text cursor. largely forgoten. motif, patched gtk; not in qt, tk, mainline gtk, etc
    • cut-buffer - deprecated everywhere. set by application using X11 window property for state

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System_selection

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