Ok, nevermind.
I can't figure out a way to do this that is not ugly.
Simply, the Abiword framework is designed expecting one system clipboard.
My current, partial implementation is taking the following approach
(none of this has been committed):
The unix clipboard has been modified to just store a pointer if the length
of the dataput on the clipboard <= 0. Then, all the functions which have
to access said data call a function to convert the current selection to
the requested format (the passed poitner is to the current doc).
This requires a new function in UnixApp which formats a specified doc
range on demand to the specified format (basically duplicating the code in
copyToClipboard, but behaves differently).
Then, a new pair of copy/paste functions have to be added to UnixApp (such
as copy/pasteTo/FromSelection. The paste behaves nearly identically to the
pasteFromClipboard (just uses a different clipboard) but the copy adds the
appropriate data formats with the data being a pointer to the document.
Then, I write a listener which looks for changes in the selection, and
calls the copyToSelection if a region is selected, or clears the selection
clipboard if the selection is empty.
Then, I write a function (which is somehow bound to middle mouse button)
which calls the pasteFromSelection.
The above method only does selection conversion at paste-time.
Now, if we don't mind actually converting the selection and
really populating the second clipboard every time a block of text is
highlighted, then we can simply things substantially.
I can resuse all of the existing copy/paste code, by swapping the
application's clipboard pointer around. This would require no changes to
the unix clipboard or UnixApp (besides allocating a second clipboard), and
only require the listener and the middle button event function, which
would basically consist of:
mClipboard = mSelectionClipboard;
cmdCopy(); // or cmdPaste();
mClipboard = mRealClipboard;
I don't know if this would hurt performance greatly, but it still kind of
annoys me. Anyone have ideas? Is the first method adequate? It really
doesn't duplicate that much code...
Anyway, I guess we can discuss this over some slashdot-funded beer
tomorrow ;)
justin