On Fri, Feb 9, 2024 at 8:20 PM <luca.saccar...@saccarosium.com> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
> I would like to make a proposal for decoupling the clipboard
> functionality from X11.
>
> I've study the code base for some time but I still need some help on
> where and how exactly do this.
>
> The problem
> ===========
>
> Currently in vim, on Linux, rely on X11 to interact with the system
> clipboard. This come with the limitation that vim needs to be compiled
> agaist X11. This means that the base vim package, in most distribution,
> as no way to interact with the system clipboard which is a really nice,
> sometimes essential, feature to have.
>
> If a normal user wants to have this feature they need to compile vim,
> which is not something that everyone is comfortable doing, or install
> gvim, which a lot of users don't want to have it installed.
>
> Also if you currently on wayland and use the `xterm_clipboard` feature
> the startup time is significantly higher due to the start of an xwaland
> instance on vim startup.
>
> Possible solutions
> ==================
>
> 1. Rely on external tools
>
> This is what neovim does with his 'providers' [1] mechanism.
> Basically they call at runtime external tools to interact with the
> system
> clipboard (e.g. 'xclip' on Linux X11 or'pbcopy' on OSX).
>
> Advantages:
> - Low cost in maintenance and in adding support for new operating
> systems,
> since every OS either has a CLI clipboard utility already built-in or
> available to download.
> - It makes trivial to support more niche or esoteric setups, since you
> can provide a simple variable to tell vim what commands to call
> (example from neovim's implementation):
>
> let g:clipboard = {
> \ 'name': 'myClipboard',
> \ 'copy': {
> \ '+': ['tmux', 'load-buffer', '-'],
> \ '*': ['tmux', 'load-buffer', '-'],
> \ },
> \ 'paste': {
> \ '+': ['tmux', 'save-buffer', '-'],
> \ '*': ['tmux', 'save-buffer', '-'],
> \ },
> \ 'cache_enabled': 1,
> \ }
>
> Disadvantages:
> - The user needs, in the worst case scenario, to install an additional
> package (but it is better than the current experience)
> - There may be some performance penalties [2].
>
> 2. Create our own implementation for dealing with the system clipboard
> without rely on X11
>
> Advantages:
> - The user is ready to go without needing to install anything
> - There shouldn't be a big performance loss
>
> Disadvantages:
> - Maintenance in theory will be more difficult since I assume is not an
> easy task to support all vim's targets while still support some
> more esoteric/less common setups.
>
> Recap
> =====
>
> I'm personally in favor of the neovim approach (the first one) but I
> would like to have some feedback on this.
>
> [1]: https://neovim.io/doc/user/provider.html#provider
> [2]: https://github.com/neovim/neovim/issues/11804
>
AFAIK on Unix/Linux (as opposed to Windows) the cliboard is a
functionality of X11/Wayland/etc. If you boot up without X11 (or
equivalent), for example at init runlevel 3 or equivalent, there is no
clipboard at all. Similarly, if you log in to a Linux text console
(i.e. after hitting one of Ctrl-Alt-F1 to Ctrl-Alt-F6) you have no
graphical display and no clipboard, even if X11 is otherwise running
(usually on tty7). So on Unix-like systems, you cannot access the
system clipboard without ultimately relying on X11 (or on an X11
substitute such as Wayland) because the clipboard is a function of the
[graphical] display manager. If X11 (or Wayland or…) is not running,
no one has access to a clipboard. If you are logged in to a Linux text
console with no access to the display manager, you have no access to
the clipboard (even if some other user on the same computer has one
because (s)he's logged in to X11).
Morality: T'aint broke, so don' fix it.
Best regards,
Tony.
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