Hi VDG,

yesterday while discussing the middle-click-paste clipboard and it's discoverability, I got an idea.

On Wayland KWin knows when content got copied into the clipboard. And KWin renders the screen and the mouse cursor. So far we don't have any feedback when copying content into the clipboard (that's especially true for the "magic" select clipboard). What do you think about adding a small indicator to the cursor image whenever new content gets set on the clipboard. Something really subtle, not disturbing?

If you think that could work I would appreciate any suggestions on how to do it visually and the visual resources to integrate. From code side it would be quite easy to integrate.

we can add an overlay also on the clipboard applet, something like a star cause a trimmer would be to big.

andreas_k wrote:we can add an overlay also on the clipboard applet, something like a star cause a trimmer would be to big.

Might work, though I'm not sure whether that's the best place for it as it's quite disconnected from the action of the user. E.g. if I type on my right screen I might not notice the small update on my left screen.

Neat idea.

If we knew where the active selection is in all cases, a quick thought off the top of my head is maybe a simple, short animation of a clipboard icon translating upwards from the active selection and fading out?

Whatever the solution, you could do it at the mouse cursor location, but it wouldn't be quite perfect since the mouse cursor can be moved away from the active selection. Might be close enough to be worth it though...

Not sure whether we know the active selection. In general we have no knowledge about the window content. Which means we also don't know where the selection is. Though with text input protocol we might have the information. That would need testing. So one could do something like: if we know where it is, put the animation to the selection, otherwise to the cursor.

If you do text selection with Shift and arrow-keys, your cursor could be in an entirely different area, though, couldn't it? So if you know where the selection is, have a little animation there (fade-in and -out the clipboard from current theme, e.g.), if not, highlight the clipboard in the systray (if any)?

ripper17 wrote:If you do text selection with Shift and arrow-keys, your cursor could be in an entirely different area, though, couldn't it? So if you know where the selection is, have a little animation there (fade-in and -out the clipboard from current theme, e.g.), if not, highlight the clipboard in the systray (if any)?

I think this would be a source of confusion. If I expect an animation to trigger where the copied text/image/whatever is, I may not even notice an animation in the systray. Thus I would wonder whether the content was indeed copied, which would be disturbing.
If I were to decide, I would put a (really subtle) animation in the systray only. This way, the behavior would be consistent whatever the content type is.

Louis

It may not be perfect, but yeah I agree a subtle visual on klipper in the status & notification area would at least be consistent even if it isn't functionally local to the selection. And perhaps that's ok since the destination of the copied content is to something that globally available to the workspace: the clipboard.

That and it might make clipboard content (and all of klippers wonderful POWAH!!) a touch more discoverable without being horribly intrusive. Done well, it seems like it would fulfill the simple-by-default, powerful-when-needed vision quite well.

Animating Klipper is probably indeed the safest and most consistent method.

We should test this with some users before the release to see whether they notice the animation. It should be noticeable because movement in the visual periphery normally triggers attention.

Of course at first it's not clear where it comes from, but if users then click Klipper, they'll see that the selection has appeared in the list and should be able to make the connection.