Feature - Decouple the copy/paste from PRIMARY or Clipboard from Putty style

[Bit-Devil]

There are plenty of people out there, including myself, who are using Terminator in WSL in Windows. Where the problem exists with the WSL2 and more precisely with WSLg, that the Windows Clipboard is not in sync with the PRIMARY in Linux. A workaround would be to enable the Putty style, but with this setting also the key bindings are changed.

So, it would be great to have the option to switch between PRIMARY and Clipboard without enabling the Putty Style keybindings for the mouse. Keep middle mouse as insert and right mouse as open menu.

All the alternatives I've found so far always involve some changes in the workflow, which makes them pretty much unusable and potentially worse than simply using the Puitty style

[mattrose]

Enabling Smart Copy should put the selection directly in the clipboard. You shouldn't need putty-style copy and pasting in your use case. Can you confirm?

[Bit-Devil]

Hi, yes, smart copy will put the selection in Terminator to the Clipboard and can be used in Windows. But the other way around does not work. Means if I copy something in Windows I can't paste it to Terminator by middle click. Middle click will instead paste the PRIMARY, using paste from context menu or Ctrl + Shift + v will paste the Windows clipboard though.

What I did on my machine was adding the config parameter for the clipboard paste to the middle_click action for the non putty_paste_style:

    if self.config['putty_paste_style']:
        middle_click = [self.popup_menu, (widget, event)]
        right_click = [self.paste_clipboard, (not self.config['putty_paste_style_source_clipboard'], True)]
    else:
        middle_click = [self.paste_clipboard, (not self.config['putty_paste_style_source_clipboard'], True)]
        right_click = [self.popup_menu, (widget, event)]

That way you can control your paste logic with smart copy as well.

[alex-seitz]

@Bit-Devil, which config did you edit?
I have the same problem and it drives me nuts. Enably smart copy on my machine does not allow the copying from linux to windows, but if yours work, that would be great.
Tank you
Alex

[Bit-Devil]

Hi @alex-seitz ,

I've actually modified the terminal.py code.
In my environment it can be found here: /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/terminatorlib/terminal.py

In the file search for "middle_click", then you will find the part, which I've posted with my last answer. My actual config then looks like that:

[alex-seitz]

Hi @Bit-Devil ,
thank you that works for the copying from windows to linux, however with the "Clpboard" selected, I can't copy the selected text within the terminator any longer.

[Bit-Devil]

Hi @alex-seitz

That's weird, I did not have that problem at all. You do also have the "Smart copy" option enabled? And you did restart the Terminator after all the changes?

[mattrose]

Yeah, make sure you have no terminator windows open before restarting. This one still gets me all the time.

Also, I'll try and take your code and pull it into a proper PR this evening, if you guys want to test this out tomorrow (all times EST)

[alex-seitz]

Hey, here is my config:

As soon as I swith to "primary", I can copy within linux but not from/to windows, however, ctrl+shift+c/v works for in between windows and linux. When I put it to clipboard, I can easily copy from windows to linux, but just selecting something no longer put it into any clipboard.

[alex-seitz]

@mattrose , I'm away tomorrow and back on monday, but if it does not work out, I will just switch back to wsl1. There everything should work as before.

[mattrose]

I made PR #1016, can you see if that works for you