Copy/Paste

[Bill Gradwohl]

Normally, I don't use a GUI, so this may seem trivially obvious to those
of you that live in one.

I'm trying to run commands in a Gnome terminal window, and then
highlight certain portions of the output with the mouse to form the
"copy" part of an operation. Then I want to go to OO and "paste" it in
to an existing OO document. I'm also attempting to copy from web pages
via Firefox to the OO document.

Sometimes this works, and other times it doesn't. In general, I can't
figure out where the "clipboard" is that holds the copied text, and what
causes the inconsistent operation. Is it Gnome, OO, X, me? What is
causing the seemingly random operation?

If I copy from the terminal window and then paste it back into the same
terminal window, or a new terminal window, it works. However, there is
no Paste option available in OO at times. If I open up an emacs editor,
I can paste that text into its scratch window. Why won't OO see the same
clipboard area?

I've also noticed that if I copy from a particular window (terminal
window) and then close that window, that the copied text also
disappears. That seems to say that the copied text is somehow connected
to the window from where it came and there is no central clipboard.

Any insight into how X, Gnome, apps, and the clipboard interact would be
appreciated as its driving me nuts.

-- 
Bill Gradwohl