Intermittent problems with copy and paste

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This particular bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug 11334 so it is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Please continue to report any other bugs you may find.

On Sun, 23 Aug 2009, mac_v wrote:

> *** This bug is a duplicate of bug 11334 ***
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/11334
>
> Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make
> Ubuntu better. This particular bug has already been reported and is a
> duplicate of bug 11334 so it is being marked as such. Please look at the
> other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can
> provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally,
> any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other
> report. Please continue to report any other bugs you may find.

after looking at bug report 11334 and the following thread it's not clear
to me whether this is a duplicate or not.

BR11334 seems to involve failure of trying to copying from one window,
closing that window, and pasting into a second window. but AFAICT this is
normal X Window behavior and the discussion centers around whether or not
to treat it as a bug.

my problems have CONSISTENTLY involved copying from one window to another
with both windows still open, and includes cases involving two windows in
the same instance of the same application. maybe i'm misunderstanding how
X works, but AFAICT normal X behavior should support this and it's a bug.

(examples: i've had problems with copying a text string from a web page in
firefox to the google's input field in an other tab in the same firefox
instance, or an url from a web page in epiphany to epiphany's address box.)

if you determine that this and BR11334 should be dealt with together please
feel free to add the observations in this message.

----

afterthought:

call it a bug, a design flaw, a wish list item, or what have you, it's
embarrassing that this is even an issue after how many years of gnome
development?

passing data easily from one user program to another has been a traditional
strength of *X style operating systems, and you'd exect a *X desktop not
to have just a decent clipboard, but to have a really cool clip board.
like maybe able to hold multiple values? like maybe backed up by one or
more files so it (or they) can be big and persistent ?

> ** This bug has been marked a duplicate of bug 11334
> Copy-Paste doesn't work if the source is closed before the paste
>
> --
> Intermittent problems with copy and paste
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/417758
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in One Hundred Paper Cuts: New
>
> Bug description:
> Intermittent problems with copying text from web browsers and pasting elsewhere. First noticed problem while using Epiphany. First thought I might be highlighting and forgetting to copy (a mistake I occasionally do make) but ruled that out after being very careful and double checking. Then thought it might be an application problem so stopped using Epiphany but have since had the same problem with Firefox.
>
> So far I haven't noticed this problem with other types of applications but as it's intermittent and I've been using browsers more than anything else lately it could be the system clip board and I've only had problems while using browsers ju...

copied over from other similar bug, where this problem has been discussed, too:

After I reported a copy and paste related bug [Bug 417758] i was notified
that it was a duplicate of Bug 11334.

I read the report and thread for Bug 11334 and notified the person who
contacted me that my problem was NOT the same as one reported in 11334.

to reiterate and clarify:

Either:

 Bug 417758 is NOT a duplicate of Bug 11334.

Or:

 Bug 11334 does not describe the full scope of the problem.

Explanation:

The problem described in Bug 11334 is that if the user selects and copies
in one window, closes the source window, and the tries to paste into
another window the paste will fail.

The problem I reported in Bug 417758 is that if the user selects and copies
in one window and tries to paste into another window the paste fails even
if the source window remains open and the selection is intact. While the
problem is frequent it is also intermittent and reproducing it is a hit or
miss affair.

Please note that the thread for Bug 11334 attributes the problem to native
X-Window behavior, which could explain the problem described in 11334 but
DOES NOT EXPLAIN the problem described in Bug 417758.

These may be two different problems or Bug 11334 may be more extensive than
previously realized.

Please also note that I spent several frustrating hours last weekend on
correspondence regarding Ubuntu bugs including this issue and this will be
my last communication on the matter. I have found the correspondence i
received dismissive, condescending, and indicative of poor practice. (That
is, you are not reading the bug reports thoroughly.) I refuse to put any
more time into this.

IMHO the way this bug has been treated illustrates some of reasons Ubuntu
continues to have significant usability issues.

I was able to confirm this problem today with firefox 3 fully updated on jaunty. Firefox was still open, but it was impossible to copy the URL from the address bar of Firefox to OpenOffice. Now today I do it without problem.. So the origin of this bug is still unknown.

Hello
Are you still experiencing this issue with the latrest updated Lucid's packages?
Thanks in advance.
Fabio

fabio,

thanx for the inquiry.

at the moment i cannot comment on the most recent versions of ubuntu.

last year i had enough trouble with regressions, bugs, and the bug reporting system to make me feel like i was spending at least as much time fixing ubuntu as using it. my dissatisfaction was compounded by my changes to the desktop user interface that struck me as gratuitus or even counter productive while fundamental features like the clip board were not yet working consistently well. therefore i switched distributions. i am currently using centos and fedora. these have not been entirely trouble-free either, but overall the experience has been better.

enough time has passed that i'm ready to give ubuntu another try. unfortunately the machine i would install it on is down with a hardware problem (CPU or MB). therefore my re-evaluation of ubuntu will have to wait until that box is back up. i'm looking forward to it as there may be benefits to working with variants of the same distro. if i learn anything that may be helpful to you at that time i'll let you know.

my suggestion re this particular problem is to assume that the problem still exists unless there is convincing evidence that the cause has been identified and fixed.

i can also offer three more general suggestions, which you're welcome to pass along as you see fit:

 1. developers should really use the software they're developing. once i got somebody to pay attention to this bug it was verified quickly. the question is why wasn't it noticed before. anyone using the GUI for a couple of days would be likely to encounter this problem, which conjured up visions of programmers hacking up GUI code in emacs and not actually using the code they're writing. that may well be wrong, but that's how it seems from the outside.

 2. fix the update process. some of my attempts to report problems were dismissed as being due to the update process rather than the package. if the update process is breaking packages then the update process needs to be fixed. bug reports resulting from update problems should be reclassified as updater bugs not rejected.

 3. apply resources more intelligently. there are few things so annoying as introduction to new, non-essential features while existing features don't work consistently well. IMHO the priority should be on making existing features work before adding new ones. the change that finally got my goat was the so-called improved alerts feature. the alerts that had stayed put until they were read and dismissed were replaced with alerts that had to be read before they faded away. to me not only was this worse rather than better, it suggested that bugs that really concerned me might never be fixed because adding new features and making gratuitus changes seemed to be higher priorities.

it has been said that the long term goal of ubuntu is to be as good as mac os x. i should point out that the outstanding, perhaps defining feature of mac os x is not any one particular GUI feature. it is that for the most part it "just works". IMHO ubuntu will only achieve this kind of overall user experience if there is extreme focus on making every...

Hello ericf

I hope to se you again in the Ubuntu users, canonical now have 100 new developers (300 total)

Fabio.

I close this report because the issue is not reproducible by the reporter. For future reference you can manage the status of your own bugs by clicking on the current status in the yellow line and then choosing a new status in the revealed drop down box. You can learn more about bug statuses at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Status. Thank you again for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please submit any future bugs you may find.