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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: Fwd: [Konsole-devel] clipboard behaviour
From:       Eric Christopherson <rakko () charter ! net>
Date:       2002-07-05 19:50:34
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On Mon, Jul 01, 2002 at 03:51:23PM -0400, Joseph Manojlovich wrote:
> Yeah, I've done some more soul-searching after my last email, and I
> already agree with what you say. I only feel that if there are to be 2
> clipboards, they need to be kept completely separate from each other:
> 
> 1) Standard X clipboard. Text is copied by selecting with the mouse,
> and pasted either through shift+insert or middle mouse click.
> 
> 2) Standard Windows/Mac clipboard. Text (or images, or files...) is
> copied by selecting and then hitting ctrl+c or by picking Copy from the
> Edit menu. Text is pasted by hiting ctrl+v or by picking Paste from the
> Edit menu.
> 
> Text copied using one technique should never be available from the
> other. [...]

I think the current separation of "clipboards" is right. It's very useful to
me, and I'm sure others, to be able to select something I want to copy and
paste it with the middle button, without disturbing the contents of the
clipboard, which I might be saving for some other use. As for what users are
used to, I wouldn't think users migrating from Windows or MacOS would even
think to middle-click; they'd probably just use the copy and paste commands
they're used to. There are a few snags, though: a) A Windows or Mac user
could accidentally hit the middle button and notice that it appears to
paste, and then they might assume from then on that MMB is the same as
ctrl+v. b) Konsole is a little inconsistent, yes, since it doesn't have a
copy action. My preference would be to have Copy and Paste available via
three routes in Konsole: 1. Edit menu; 2. Right-button context menu; 3.
keyboard shortcuts of some kind. Of course ctrl combinations would be Bad
because they are usually sent to the terminal; perhaps some sane defaults
like meta+c and meta+v, or ctrl+shift+c and ctrl+shift+v, would be good
(customizable by the user, of course).

Come to think of it, using shift+insert seems troublesome to me, because in
Windows it is equivalent to ctrl+v, whereas in Konsole it pastes the
*selection*, not the clipboard.  

> What I think this means for KDE, is that _every_ KDE app needs to have
> ctrl+c/ctrl+v available somehow, either through a menu (as konsole
> needs) or directly by the appropriate keystrokes. Each app needs to
> have the ability to access both clipboards.

Agreed.
 
Joseph Manojlovich also said, in another message:
> Example, just now, I
> wanted to copy a web page from Konq into Kate, so I selected-all and
> copied using the Konq menu (no "copy" entry in Konq's right mouse menu?)
[...]

I've noticed too the absence of copy/cut/paste entries in context menus in a
few apps, most noticeably Konqueror. Wouldn't it make sense to include those
actions in any context menus where they make sense? I.e. it doesn't make
much sense to include cut or paste in a context menu for a read-only widget,
like the HTML view, but copy should be provided; widgets with nothing that
can possibly be copied or pasted shouldn't have any of those items.

-- 
Eric Christopherson, a.k.a. Contrarian Conlanger Rakko ^_^
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