emacs terminal mode: how to copy and paste efficiently

Question

I'm having a hard time making this emacs -nw work effectively under the terminal mode (emacs -nw). Some setup information: The working server is connected via SSH, and emacs is running on the server. Usually I'm connecting using SSH and "emacs -nw" to work on my files.

The emacs config is picked up from: https://hugoheden.wordpress.com/2009/03/08/copypaste-with-emacs-in-terminal/

;; make mouse selection to be emacs region marking
(require 'mouse)
(xterm-mouse-mode t)
(defun track-mouse (e)) 
(setq mouse-sel-mode t)

;; enable clipboard in emacs
(setq x-select-enable-clipboard t)

;; enable copy/paste between emacs and other apps (terminal version of emacs)
(unless window-system
 (when (getenv "DISPLAY")
  ;; Callback for when user cuts
  (defun xsel-cut-function (text &optional push)
    ;; Insert text to temp-buffer, and "send" content to xsel stdin
    (with-temp-buffer
      (insert text)
      ;; I prefer using the "clipboard" selection (the one the
      ;; typically is used by c-c/c-v) before the primary selection
      ;; (that uses mouse-select/middle-button-click)
      (call-process-region (point-min) (point-max) "xsel" nil 0 nil "--clipboard" "--input")))
  ;; Call back for when user pastes
  (defun xsel-paste-function()
    ;; Find out what is current selection by xsel. If it is different
    ;; from the top of the kill-ring (car kill-ring), then return
    ;; it. Else, nil is returned, so whatever is in the top of the
    ;; kill-ring will be used.
    (let ((xsel-output (shell-command-to-string "xsel --clipboard --output")))
      (unless (string= (car kill-ring) xsel-output)
        xsel-output )))
  ;; Attach callbacks to hooks
  (setq interprogram-cut-function 'xsel-cut-function)
  (setq interprogram-paste-function 'xsel-paste-function)
  ;; Idea from
  ;; http://shreevatsa.wordpress.com/2006/10/22/emacs-copypaste-and-x/
  ;; http://www.mail-archive.com/help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org/msg03577.html
 ))

The reason to have:

 (require 'mouse)
 (xterm-mouse-mode t)
 (defun track-mouse (e)) 
 (setq mouse-sel-mode t)

is to enable mouse selection over text such that the text region is highlighted just as "C-x SPC" marking the region. Then I can use "M-x w" to copy and "C-x y" to paste text within emacs and between emacs and other apps.

All look perfect except that any operations related to X are REALLY SLOW! My connection to the remote server is smooth -- the latency is usually under 100ms. But to kill one line of text using "C-x k", it takes ~5 seconds! To paste it, it takes another 5 seconds!

When copy/paste is frequent sometimes, this becomes really annoying. I think this is related to the X sever messaging, but not sure if there is good way to fix this.

Any ideas? Thanks!

Answer 1

This is not an ideal solution per se, but i figured out a way that I feel better than the previous one.

The idea is to get rid of X which causes heavy latency issues, i.e. keep only the following:

;; enable clipboard in emacs
(setq x-select-enable-clipboard t)

The results are:

1. copy/paste within Emacs is straightforward and fast.

2. copy from other apps to Emacs: Ctrl+Shift+v

3. copy from Emacs to other apps: mouse selection is now on X Selection, so right-click and copy shall copy the text into the Selection. Note that 'M-w" now won't copy anything into Selection or system clipboard.

This is again a compromise rather than a solution, but considering the fact that i copy/paste more often than inter-app operations, this is acceptable at the moment.

Still looking forward to a good solution!