fix: do not use clipboard on X11

[reitzig]

Implements #41 for X11.

[reitzig]

Maybe wtype could be used for Wayland, but I can't test that.

[reitzig]

Testing this with "man shrugging":

With gedit as target:

No emoji font, looks legit.

Thunderbird:

Github:

Slack: and sometimes and sometimes nothing.

Tweetdeck: But sometimes:

Apparently, type sometimes doesn't get through whatever bullshit "modern" web apps do with keyboard events before doing the actually expected thing, at least not fast enough. I never observed this with the clipboard variant.

Maybe a sleep is necessary after all? What's your experience?

I saw some improvement doing this:

os.system(f"xdotool windowfocus --sync '{self.current_window}'")
time.sleep(0.15)
os.system(f"xdotool type --args 1 '{emojis}'")

But the first "character" still got swallowed sometimes. :sleepy:

[tom-james-watson]

Hello - thanks for your contribution!

I looked into this previously and there's no reliable way to do this on Wayland unfortunately. See https://github.com/atx/wtype/issues/22 for why wtype doesn't work.

I think a better version of what you're trying to do would be to keep the app working the same as it does now, but then to copy back the original clipboard contents after pasting.

However at the moment the app also has some features that are designed around clipboard use. As an example, you can open the app, right click several emojis and then close the app with Esc. The selected emojis are appended to your clipboard as you select them, with the state of which are selected visible in the app. You then would paste those emojis into whatever app you are using. If the app were just selection of single emojis, maybe it would be easier to make this change.

I think if we were to change to restoring clipboard contents after pasting, the app would require some UX tweaks to make it so that the only way to interact with the app is to "finalize" a selection in a way that performs a paste. I would imagine that would also break some flows though where people are relying on having the emojis hang around in their clipboard.

[mpsijm]

I just installed Emote from the AUR. It took some manual work to apply the patch, ugly but works :joy: In case this helps anyone, I performed these steps:

• git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/emote.git
• git clone https://github.com/mpsijm/Emote.git
• In Emote: git diff master patch-1 > ../emote/pull-42
• In emote: apply the below diff to PKGBUILD and makepkg -si

`PKGBUILD` diff

diff --git a/PKGBUILD b/PKGBUILD
index 780b156..79be016 100644
--- a/PKGBUILD
+++ b/PKGBUILD
@@ -14,11 +14,13 @@ source=(
   "https://github.com/tom-james-watson/Emote/archive/${_pkgref}.tar.gz"
   'setup.py'
   'fix-skin-tone-static-path.patch'
+  'pull-42.patch'
 )
 sha512sums=(
   'SKIP'
   'ef8caea8ad9e9bc0487dd8c816561027adda743c1e8e2779a64e7ae99fb227c820f31ef9c87fb910bae7a8ffc623e5e2e1a53a8c69ce0a35ad96557e97a5a949'
   '52d3dce0cecfe62ccc4469b4b35b27c8332d6dce2d1e2dd5603c85a3025fb4a415df303eaaace5579c4204923cbd8d86846deb1026a01f8b201452453c61746f'
+  'SKIP'
 )
 
 build() {
@@ -26,6 +28,8 @@ build() {
   mv -f "$srcdir/setup.py" "$srcdir/Emote-$_pkgref/setup.py"
   # Fix skin tone and `static/` path issues when not running as a snap
   patch -d "$srcdir/Emote-$_pkgref" -p1 <"$srcdir/fix-skin-tone-static-path.patch"
+  # Apply patch from https://github.com/tom-james-watson/Emote/pull/42
+  patch -d "$srcdir/Emote-$_pkgref" -p1 <"$srcdir/pull-42.patch"
   # Move static files into the library
   mv -T "$srcdir/Emote-$_pkgref/static" "$srcdir/Emote-$_pkgref/emote/static"
   # Fix .desktop file

---

Testing this with "man shrugging":

[...]

Apparently, type sometimes doesn't get through whatever bullshit "modern" web apps do with keyboard events before doing the actually expected thing, at least not fast enough. I never observed this with the clipboard variant.

Maybe a sleep is necessary after all? What's your experience?

I saw some improvement doing this:

os.system(f"xdotool windowfocus --sync '{self.current_window}'")
time.sleep(0.15)
os.system(f"xdotool type --args 1 '{emojis}'")

But the first "character" still got swallowed sometimes. :sleepy:

@reitzig If I split the command and remove the sleep (see https://github.com/mpsijm/Emote/commit/patch-1), I'm getting good results in Firefox, Chrome, Telegram, Slack, Gedit, and Xfce4 Terminal :smile:

No characters swallowed yet, but then again, I just installed the tool. :stuck_out_tongue: I'll report later if I find an app for which it doesn't work. :slightly_smiling_face:

EDIT: LibreOffice (tested with Writer and Calc) does seem to swallow characters, but not consistently, with or without sleep :sweat_smile: