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Copying text which contains the line [Desktop Entry] silently fails on Wayland #4150

Description

@Yasand123

Description

Copying a selection where the content contains [Desktop Entry] fails with no error, status bar says "copied", but nothing shows up in the system clipboard. Everything else in the same buffer copies fine. It's specific to that exact line/content.

Root cause
It's wl-copy's MIME auto-detection. When invoked without --type, wl-copy sniffs the content and if it has [Desktop Entry], it decides this is a .desktop file and advertises the clipboard offer as application/x-desktop only, no text/plain alongside it.

Since basically every other app (and wl-paste by default) requests text/plain, they get nothing, because the clipboard owner isn't offering that format at all.

You can confirm this by pulling the raw type:

wl-paste --type application/x-desktop

which returns the content just fine.

Fix
IMO, micro should invoke wl-copy --type text/plain by default when copying buffer text to the system clipboard, instead of relying on wl-copy's content sniffing. The editor knows the content is text; it shouldn't leave MIME-type inference up to a heuristic that can silently produce a non-text-only offer. This would avoid this failure mode entirely (and any other content wl-copy might auto-classify as something other than plain text).

Environment

  • Version: 2.0.15
  • OS: CachyOS
  • Terminal: Konsole

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