Maybe you'll see the spirit of Elvis. Basically XF86 is the X11 driver that drives the PC display, it knows about SVGA cards, keyboards and what X11 wants it to do. But after the hardware has being driven, a display manager is needed to add the correct style of borders to windows , to pick up the desktop configuration menu, and to control how X11 messages are routed between apps on the desktop. XF86 will exit the X11 desktop, when olvwm exits. Actually, the application can have a selection of text-type, or of other types.
Text seems to be the most common format.
The keys to use to activate selection and paste, vary with applications and window managers, but it usually has a consistent feel. Often it is a good idea to go-get the pieces of text you want to paste, and keep them in a clipboard for later. It is simply a place to cut and paste text, but it can collect several different strings, and recall them. You still have to highlight the selection from the clipboard, so that you can paste it elsewhere, but that's simple enough.