Copy to X Primary Selection

[stevebakes]

VMWare Workstation - and possibly other apps - use the X Primary Selection instead of the clipboard for integration of clipboards between the host and guest. In order to copy an item from PG into my VMWare guest, I need to copy from PG, paste into gedit, copy from gedit, paste into VMWare.

Is it possible to add an option in Password Gorilla which copies to the X Primary Selection instead of (or as well as?) the clipboard?

[rich123]

PWGorilla already uses both the X Primary and X Clipboard selections simultaneously for the "copy to clipboard" function when running under X11:

gorilla/sources/gorilla.tcl

Line 7067 in 5b3be9b

# x11 supports PRIMARY and CLIPBOARD x11 style clipboards

So the issue with clipboard integration and VMWare should not be due to a miss-match between Primary and Clipboard selections under X11.

By any chance, do you have the "auto copy" feature (File->Preferences, General tab, "Use Gorilla auto copy") turned on? If yes, try turning that option off and see if anything changes with VMWare. If it does, and you are not running at least the code that was pushed to Github as commit d692603 (pushed Nov. 12, 2018) on the pre-160 branch, then my next suggestion would be to try that version. It includes a workaround to try to prevent the auto-copy feature from interacting badly with clipboard manager programs. And I suspect that VMWare's clipboard integration may function in a very similar way to the various clipboard manager programs available for X11.

[stevebakes]

Thanks for the quick reply. I looked at the 'auto-copy' option, it seemed to be unrelated to this problem so I didn't try it (the option was already off for me).

I'm using the 1.6.0 b1 release that comes with my Ubuntu 19.04 distro, so it should include the code that you indicated with the link. So it seems that you may be correct that the behaviour is with how VMWare works with the clipboard. I've recently tried Keepass, which DOES work properly, I don't know what that program might do differently to PWG.

Cheers.

[rich123]

Nor do I know why at this moment.

But, I have created two small tools that might prove useful in trying to debug what VMWARE does not like. I've put them online in the archives area of the downloads page:

https://gorilla.dp100.com/downloads/archive/

Both are plain Tcl script files, so you need the Tcl/Tk runtime installed (but as likely already have it installed).

The one numbered "1" is the "create selections" tool. The one numbered "2" is simply a "paste from selection type X" tool, just to see what happens.

The number 1 tool has four rows of buttons, one labeled "clipboard" then rest labeled X11 PRIMARY|CLIPBOARD|SECONDARY. The reason for four is that Tk has a "clipboard" command and an X11 "selection" command, but "clipboard" on X11 seems to just be an alias for the X11 CLIPBOARD selection. But included both for completness.

The 'clear" buttons do what they say, they clear the various "selections" for the row upon which they reside.

The "insert" or "take ownership" buttons perform a "copy to X" operation to the various "selections" as per the row upon which they sit. Each generates a unique string and sets up for copying that string into that selection.

The text box above the buttons provides feedback as to what has happened.

So, launch both scripts, then in the window for the "1" script, push all of the clear buttons, then all of the insert/take ownership buttons.

Then, in the window for the "2" script, there are four buttons, each performs a "paste" from the particular selection. This one is to see what is present, and partly to test the first script (because for each of the X11 buttons in script "2", when you push it, the window for script "1" should show a status line that a particular selection was just requested.

What you'll want to look for when testing against VMWARE are the "Selection request ..." lines and the "Ownership ... lost" lines. Testing against VMWARE will be the same as with the "2" script, push all the "insert" and "take ownership" buttons, then try pasting into VMWARE in whatever various ways it allows for pasting, and see what "Selection request" and "Ownership ... lost" lines appear in the status area. Then let me know what the results were.