Apple has done it again: broken something beyond repair.
In Snow Leopard, copy and paste between X11 and other applications seems at first to work just as in previous versions of MacOS X.
But after a while, it just stops working.
To "fix" it, you need to quit the X11 application and start over.
But that also means exiting all the X11 client applications that you had running, it's not quite as simple as restarting a window manager used to be.
Apple is notorious for not fixing bugs with their X11 implementation other than at the time of a new MacOS X version, so don't hold your breath.
So here's a butt-ugly work-around. Prerequisite: a spare xterm with e.g. bash running.
- Select the text you want to copy.
- Copy it into your spare xterm. Example: copying the URL
http://www.google.com/
(in real life, the URL is bound to be harder to type by hand)jani@computer ~ >echo 'http://www.google.com/' > /tmp/paste
- Switch to a first-class Mac application citizen, like Terminal.app.
- In Terminal.app, get the contents of the paste file:
jani@computer ~ >cat /tmp/paste
http://www.google.com/
- Select the text and copy it with command+c
- Switch to your favourite browser, e.g. Opera
- Paste the URL into the address bar
See, that was
eaaaasy.
*grumble*