http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18448
Summary: Wine does not support X11 clipboard Product: Wine Version: 1.1.21 Platform: Other OS/Version: Linux Status: UNCONFIRMED Severity: enhancement Priority: P2 Component: -unknown AssignedTo: wine-bugs@winehq.org ReportedBy: tarasov.igor@gmail.com
There are 2 clipboards in modern linux distributions. First one is handled by X11 and another one by DE.
In order to copy into first one you just need to select text. In order to paste from that clipboard you need to click middle mouse button (wheel).
Second clipboard is managed by DE and in order to access it you use DE-specific hotkeys, usually ctrl/shift+insert and ctrl+c/v/x.
The later one is supported by wine, so you can easily copy text from wine applications into linux programs and vice versa.
But the first one, X11 clipboard is not supported at all. This is not just matter of convenience and ease of use, you can't just select some text and then middle click it into browser, for instance. The problem is that this sometimes break some applications.
For instance, take very popular linux dictionary, StarDict. It is very handy, since you can just simply select some text in any application and translation pops up. But if you try to do that with any wine application, this won't work. This makes usage of StarDict very inconvenient.
Also, middle-click is supported by wine, but it's support is incorrect. When you middle-click into wine application, it does paste text, but not from X11 clipboard (as one might expect) but from DE's one.