MacX Clipboard and Interleaf Clipboard (7/95)


I'm having a problem with operations that involve the Interleaf clipboard, which also then involves the MacX clipboard. As a result, I'm losing all but the plain text from the Interleaf clipboard. I have a Power Macintosh, System 7.5, MacX 1.2, and 24 MB of RAM, along with Interleaf 6.0.3 (DTP program) client running on a SPARCstation server 1000 with Solaris 2.3.

Have you heard of this type of problem before? Is there a way to disable the Mac/X clipboard?

One obvious symptom here is that only text and not graphics is being copied to the clipboard. This has to do with how the X client implements the cut/copy/paste mechanism. The problem is most likely due to a conflict between the X11R4 xclipboard (used by the X client) and the Macintosh Clipboard (used by MacX). This conflict was reported in the MacX 1.1.7 Release Notes:

"Conflicts between xclipboard and the Macintosh Clipboard:

MacX uses the built-in Macintosh Clipboard when you cut and paste text. If you run the xclipboard client application with MacX, it conflicts with the Macintosh Clipboard. To avoid this problem, do not use xclipboard while running MacX. (In other words, do not open the xclipboard client application)."

If this is the case, we suggest that the X client modify their client's xclipboard code to support Macintosh clipboard for copy and paste.

Also regarding the MacX cut/copy/paste Mechanism:

"MacX uses the CLIPBOARD selection. Whenever someone gets ownership of the CLIPBOARD selection, MacX asks that it be converted to STRING and puts the result into the Macintosh scrap (clipboard). If your application does select things with this selection, it will work.

MacX supports both the old fashioned and modern style of clipboard selection. However, for X clients to work with MacX, they need to use the 'CLIPBOARD Selection' instead of selecting XA_PRIMARY."


Article Change History:
20 Jul 1995 - Made corrections for clarity.

Support Information Services
Published Date: Feb 19, 2012