[22.2.1] problems with text copy/paste emacs <-> firefox

[Tom Roche]

summary:

Emacs can't paste to firefox--much less often firefox can't paste to
emacs--on fresh install of xubuntu 9.04, emacs 22.2.1, firefox 3.5.
How to fix/debug?

details:

Apologies if this should go to bug-gnu-emacs (but it may be a
configuration problem) or if it's a FAQ (but my searches haven't found
it): please let me know if this forum is in/appropriate, and feel free
to reply directly to me as well as to list.

About a week ago I used wubi to install xubuntu 9.04 on a laptop that
has been running winxp sp3 with cygwin. Cygwin, xubuntu, and winXP are
all up-to-date patchwise.  Emacs on cygwin is version=22.4.1 and emacs
on xubuntu is version 22.2.1, so it was relatively easy to setup
mounts and symlinks to allow the xubuntu emacs to use the same
~/.emacs.d/* et al as the cygwin emacs. (Problems there involve
bookmarks and desktop, about which I'll post separately.)

The main problem I'm having on xubuntu is a complete (or at least very
frequent) inability to copy text from emacs to firefox-3.5. I have not
observed problems copying text from emacs to the terminal, or to other
Xfce apps; similarly I have not observed problems copying from other
apps to firefox. Occasionally I also observed problems copying text
from firefox to emacs, but those are comparatively rare. (There might
also be problems copying text from firefox to other applications, but
I almost never copy from firefox to anything other than emacs.)

By contrast, I almost never have these problems with copy/paste
between cygwin emacs, cygwin X, and win32 firefox; when I do, they
seem to be symmetrical. (I.e. pasting emacs -> firefox seems to fail
about as often as pasting firefox -> emacs, and both probabilities are
low.)

Your suggestions regarding fixing and debugging this problem
(including better places to seek help) are appreciated. I'm not sure
if it's a problem with emacs, firefox, GTK, X or what.

HTH, Tom Roche <Tom_Roche@pobox.com>