[Annoyances] X-Windows Copy & Paste

[Linas Vepstas]

Hi George,

I am very surprised by your remarks:

> ALL apps should have an explicit copy operation. 

I couldn't disagree more.  At best, 'copy' might be needed for
complex structured copies, where you want to copy text AND a graphic
in one go.  Implicit copies are possible and (can be made to) work 
fine in almost all other cases.

> This is the way it works in windows quite apparently and people are
> quite happy with that solution.

Maybe you don't actually use windows :-)

This is one of the worst features in windows.  Cut-n-paste is
fundamentally mis-designed in windows.  I suspect its was
intentionally mis-designed, in order to side-step possible 
infringement claims during the 1980's MS-vs-Apple GUI technology
copyright wars.

MS made a number of really bad GUI decisions in that era, just
so that they could say they are different.  They then maintained
compatibility with these mis-features over the years.  For example,
the broken windows scrollbar.  It is so crappily broken that it
needed the wheel-mouse to be invented to make it usable in the 
'human factors' sense.
  
Lets not wait for the 'cut-n-paste' mouse geegaw to be invented.
Lets not try to emulate the worst in Windows.

> I highly doubt that.  The only advantage is that you don't have to press a
> key to copy, and that's a very dubious advantage.  

Your remarks only serve to reveal that you almost never use cut-n-paste.

--linas



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pub  1024D/01045933 2001-02-01 Linas Vepstas (Labas!) <linas at linas.org>
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