[Annoyances] X-Windows Copy & Paste

[John Ryland]

On Wednesday 20 August 2003 07:02, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> A quick history lesson.
[snip]
> Moral of the story: to fix this kind of interoperability fiasco, you:
>
>  1. write down how it works
>  2. make all apps match the spec, not each other
>
> "each other" is a moving target, you get in an infinite loop.

True.

I have a suggestion. The selections thing seems wrong. Left click drag selects 
text, no problem, but shouldn't copy IMHO. I don't understand why it is not 
middle click drag to select and copy for this purpose. It would feel more 
logical and semetrical with the middle click being paste. Might take a bit of 
time to adjust (myself included), but left click select to highlight is then 
non-destructive. I don't know the history of this but I get the feeling it 
was a hack by an engineer, not a feature suggested by someone with any 
usability experience.

Also there should be only one clipboard IMHO. Whether I select text with the 
mouse or if I press Ctrl+XCV or Ctrl+Ins,Shift+Ins/Del, or right click for a 
context menu, or use the application menu, they should all copy and paste the 
same, period. It is madness to have a special copy which only works while an 
app is running and have all these special hacks. Programming madness and 
usability madness.

The only good argument I have heard for using the primary buffer for 
selections is that selecting text would overwrite the clipboard buffer 
otherwise, but as I have suggested, if selections are made with the middle 
button, this solves this problem.

Comments?

Anyway, that's my 2c
John