Re: enabling xterm_clipboard support by default

[Manas Gupta]

I was wondering what could be the reasoning behind not enabling the xterm_clipboard and clipboard support in native vim installations in different distributions?

I went through a few forums and threads where I found people find it difficult to copy/paste text into system's clipboard.

Although I found there is a way, by using skel. But it doesn't seem to be working as expected.

Thanks

Manas

[Grant Taylor]

On 3/28/20 3:15 PM, Manas Gupta wrote:
> I was wondering what could be the reasoning behind not enabling the
> xterm_clipboard and clipboard support in native vim installations in
> different distributions?

I can't remember of a distribution that I wasn't able to use X11's
clipboard or primary selection buffer.

> I went through a few forums and threads where I found people find it
> difficult to copy/paste text into system's clipboard.

I'll agree that it's not obvious how to use the clipboard / primary
selection buffer in vim. But then again, this is vim, what is obvious
or intuitive to the new vim user?

> Although I found there is a way, by using skel. But it doesn't seem to
> be working as expected.

What's wrong with using the + (plus) / * (star) registers?

"+p puts the contents of the system clipboard.
"*p puts the contents of the primary selection buffer.

You can easily use other commands using the standard register notation.



--
Grant. . . .
unix || die

[Tony Mechelynck]

Every distribution includes and excludes features according to its own
preferences in the various versions of Vim it distributes. By default,
+xterm_clipboard is enabled in Normal, Big and Huge versions — unless
they are configured with the --without-x switch. If you run a
GUI-enabled Vim in an xterm or similar terminal emulator, it ought to
be able to access the clipboard. If your default "vim" executable (as
shown by "which vim" and possibly repeating it to follows the link) is
compiled with -x11, then "gvim -v" ought to start the gvim executable
in console mode. If you compile your own Vim and the proper
development packages are installed, it will be named "vim" with (among
others) a soft link "gvim" pointing to it.

All this is for Unix-like systems: on MS-Windows no executable can
serve both in console mode and in GUI mode.

Best regards,
Tony.