Comment 5 for bug 527977

On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 3:48 AM, Uday Reddy <email address hidden> wrote:

> kill-new takes care of the primary selection.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to VM.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/527977
>
> Title:
> Customizable browser list
>
> Status in VM (View Mail) for Emacs:
> In Progress
>
> Bug description:
> Picked up from Debian bug reports:
>
> http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=241533
>
> Right clicking on a URL gives a menu of really outdated list of web
> browsers. Make it customizable so that the users can add browsers of
> their own choice.
>

The following, taken from the emacs 24 NEWS file, may be relevant to any
changes wrt selection - in particular, the primary selection as there are
differences between platforms in this area and things change considerably
with emacs 24

** Selection changes.

The default handling of clipboard and primary selections was changed
to conform with modern X applications. In short, most commands for
killing and yanking text now use the clipboard, while mouse commands
use the primary selection.

In the following, we provide a list of these changes, followed by a
list of steps to get the old behavior back if you prefer that.

*** `mouse-drag-copy-region' now defaults to nil.
*** `select-active-regions' now defaults to t.
Merely selecting text (e.g. with drag-mouse-1) no longer puts it in
the kill-ring. The selected text is put in the primary selection, if
the system possesses a separate primary selection facility (e.g. X).

**** `select-active-regions' also accepts a new value, `only'.
This means to only set the primary selection for temporarily active
regions (usually made by mouse-dragging or shift-selection);
"ordinary" active regions, such as those made with C-SPC followed by
point motion, do not alter the primary selection.

*** mouse-2 is now bound to `mouse-yank-primary'.
This pastes from the primary selection, ignoring the kill-ring.
Previously, mouse-2 was bound to `mouse-yank-at-click'.

*** `x-select-enable-clipboard' now defaults to t on all platforms.
*** `x-select-enable-primary' now defaults to nil.
Thus, commands that kill text or copy it to the kill-ring (such as
M-w, C-w, and C-k) also use the clipboard---not the primary selection.

**** The "Copy", "Cut", and "Paste" items in the "Edit" menu are now
exactly equivalent to, respectively M-w, C-w, and C-y.

**** Note that on MS-Windows, `x-select-enable-clipboard' was already
non-nil by default, as Windows does not support the primary selection
between applications.

*** To return to the previous behavior, do the following:

**** Change `mouse-drag-copy-region' to t.
**** Change `x-select-enable-primary' to t (on X only).
**** Change `x-select-enable-clipboard' to nil.
**** Bind `mouse-yank-at-click' to mouse-2.

*** Support for X cut buffers has been removed.

** New command `rectangle-number-lines', bound to `C-x r N', numbers
the lines in the current rectangle. With an prefix argument, this
prompts for a number to count from and for a format string.