User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008072820 Firefox/3.0.1 Build Identifier: When selecting a line of text to copy/paste from PINE/Alpine, the blank space between the end of the line (of text) and the edge of the terminal--the last column--is filled with spaces. The result is that paste results in text followed by many spaces and then a new line. In xterm, this blank space is empty; thus, copy/paste results in text with a newline after the last character. This does not occur when using Vim, so it has something to do with PINE/Alpine, but possibly other applications, too. Both PINE and Vim are ncurses-based, I think. However, it also does not occur when using PINE/Alpine in gnome-terminal. So, that seems to point to a solution in XTerminal. I am using Xfce 4.4.2 from Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04.1 (x86_64) P.S. I tried very hard to avoid posting a bug. I searched for an existing bug several times. I couldn't get the latest source via SVN because instructions to anonymous the SVN repository required authentication. I understand Alpine is doing something different from Vim, but what? I'm happy to file a bug with UW if I can figure that out. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. run Alpine, go to the main menu 2. SHIFT-select the word "Washingon" near the bottom of the screen in the Copyright line. 3. Drag past the end of the line, slowly. 4. In XTermainal, the text selected will be "Washington<sp><sp>" and so on. In gnome-terminal, it will select "Washington\n" and the rest of the line will be slected. 5. Paste to Vim running in a real xterm or to a text editor to see it more clearly. Actual Results: This is the line from XTerminal: Washington <-- spaces end here This is the line from gnome-terminal: Washington [My terminal was 107c wide in both.] Expected Results: XTerminal should have only selected "Washington\n", but instead, it selected spaces until the end of the terminal. I suspect the problem is not actually the copy/paste functions, but way XTerminal displays text. If gnome-terminal were doing some sort of conversion for Alpine's output, lines of real spaces would be shorted to just a newline, along with these end of line spaces; but that is not the case. So, I dont' think Alpine is padding the end of the line with spaces. My best guess is that XTerminal is padding the end of the line with spaces. But, why, when it doesn't do that for Vim.
There is no difference in the way gnome-terminal and the Xfce terminal copy test to the clipboard, this is all handled by vte. So I have no idea what's going on here.
Hi Nick, Thanks for not ignoring my report. I don't understand what is going on either, that's for sure. But, this behavior is no longer always reproducible. Something is different and better. I've checked several e-mail messages and was able to select whole lines with out copying the trailing blank space. I wish I knew what fixed it, but much has changed on my system since I reported the issue. I'm still using all of the same components, however. So, I feel pretty confident that the root cause was addressed, somehow.