Ctrl-C / Ctrl-V copy and paste not working

I would like to verify that I observe this bug too. It's like copy/paste functionality comes and goes. Sometimes, I can click away from a document then refocus the window, and copy/paste will work again. Sometimes, it works in some nedit windows and not others at the same time. Once the problem starts happening, the only way to fix it is to close ALL nedit windows (they may all be using the same nedit server) and reopen. Meanwhile, copy/paste works just fine in all other apps.

I have also observed this bug on multiple occasions. Copy/Paste using ctrl-c,v ceases to work in some nedit windows, while it works fine in other applications. I work with multiple windows and multiple tabs and invariably at some point ctrl-c,v ceases to work properly.

Two potential causes come to mind as to what might be going wrong:

(1) Some kind of breakage occurs in nedit or lesstif (probably lesstif, given what people are saying about a related bug) that makes it stop working.

(2) Lesstif does not interact correctly with the environment (X11, KDE, etc.) and thus is not able to properly use the clipboard.

Just now, I had this problem occur, so I closed all nedit windows and ensured that no nedit or nc processes were running. When I restarted nedit, copy/paste STILL did not work. This suggests, perhaps, option (2).

I have Gentoo as well as Ubuntu on the same machine (amd64). Running it under Gnome on both. This bug manifests only on the Ubuntu side. Might be a clue - the Gentoo version builds against OpenMotif; perhaps the Ubuntu version is built against Lesstif?

I have marked bug #1027 as a duplicate of this one.
Bug #1027 have some comments on the choice of building with Lesstif or OpenMotif. I know almost nothing, but I was under the feeling that when Ctrl-C is pressed, nedit window is sometimes loosing focus when compiled with Lesstif.

Has this bug been pushed upstream to lesstif and the nedit folks? I suspect one reason why this bug hasn't been fixed is that it isn't classified as a lesstif bug. How do we mark this as belonging also to lesstif?

And while we're waiting, could someone suggest a suitable substitute for nedit? I like how it handles multiple documents and has syntax highlighting for all sorts of languages, including LaTeX and Verilog (which I use a LOT).

FWIW, the closest equivalent I've found to Nedit is Kedit. It's part of KDE and is widely available, and it implements most of the same functionality including block selections, scripting (if memory serves), syntax highlighting for a wide range of languages (LaTeX almost for sure, not sure about Verilog), and has a few things Nedit lacks such as the ability to load and save files through ftp, sftp, etc (using io-slaves). In addition, since it's built on the modern QT toolkit it supports niceties like antialiased text rendering and drag-and-drop file loading.

There are downsides, though. For one thing, it requires a bunch of libraries which might otherwise not be needed (if you don't normally run KDE apps) and it's generally much more resource intensive and harder to port than Nedit. Getting it running on a Solaris is probably painful, for example.

More fundamentally, though, the user interface for Kedit is pretty poorly thought out in many cases. It's designed for consistency with other KDE apps, and KDE has some interface design errors which make it significantly less usable than it should be. Most importantly, it tends to follow the Microsoft button assignments which overuse the left button, which makes select, copy, drag etc. clumsy. And there are a few gotchas such as the find/replace dialog being modal.

My solution for the moment is Nedit on Gentoo.

Oops, I meant "Kate", not "Kedit"!

Part of an email from NEdit list:

>>We are aware of various clipboard locking problems with some versions of
Lesstif and OpenMotif, but to the best of our knowledge, the problems
are in (some versions of) those libraries. An often common factor is
that KDE's clipboard manager (Klipper) is monopolizing the clipboard,
which seems to increase the likelyhood that something goes wrong.

In our current CVS version we take some countermeasures, but it is not
known whether they have any effect as the problem is not easily
reproducable.

Eddy<<

Looks like it could be a problem with KDE. Anyone having this problem with GNOME?

> Looks like it could be a problem with KDE. Anyone having this problem with GNOME?

Yes, I have this problem and do not have KDE installed (am running GNOME).