RE: Savannah: no more Ctrl-Ins when using mouse copy

[Drew Adams]

> I got emacs last week from Savannah's bzr and compiled it in Fedora
> 14.  It is using the same old .emacs config I'm carrying over 
> the years.
> 
> All is well, although I noticed that now it is not possible 
> anymore to use Ctrl-Ins to paste text that was copied elsewhere
> (other application) using the mouse.  With all previous versions of 
> emacs from the say, last 7 years, this was possible.  Now, if
> some text is copied to the buffer using the mouse, then the mouse
> must be used to paste it back into emacs.
> 
> Not a big deal, but I surely have to get used to it.  My 
> question is: is this paste behaviour a permanent change or is it
> part of a current development mishap ?  Or a system config issue
> (although the previous emacs on same Fedora 14 (and same .emacs)
> was not thus restricted and allowed Ctrl-Ins text copied using
> the mouse) ?

Emacs selection behavior has changed significantly since (i.e. after) Emacs
23.2.

In sum, mouse selection no longer affects the `kill-ring', by default.  You
cannot select with the mouse and then use `C-y' to yank what you selected.  To
be able to yank it, you must first use `M-w' to copy it to the `kill-ring'.

Personally, I prefer the previous behavior (I'm on Windows, FWIW), so I
customize `mouse-drag-copy-region' to t.  That tells mouse selection to put the
selected text on the `kill-ring'.  In Windows, that was the behavior up through
Emacs 23.2.

I can't speak for Emacs Dev, but I believe the rationale for this change was to
make Emacs behave more like other applications in X Window.  (Someone might
correct that understanding.)

The relevant section of the Emacs manual is node `Mouse Commands', but AFAICT
that doc has not yet been updated to reflect this (big) change.  The doc still
says, for example:

"In addition, the region is copied into the kill ring.
 If you don't want Emacs to copy the region, change the
 variable `mouse-drag-copy-region' to `nil'."

(The default value of the variable is now t; the default behavior is NOT to copy
the text to the kill ring.)