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Ghost Cut – Or why Cut and Paste is broken everywhere

ishmael.textualize.io

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Re: Ghost Cut – Or why Cut and Paste is broken everywhere

#101

Post by rao-v »

throwawayffffas wrote: post #22

Cut and Paste is three operations. Cut is two operations copy and delete, copy is never undone by undo it should not be undone when you cut either. I cut, undo, ..., undo, and paste multiple times a day. It's a feature not a bug. > Cut & Paste is not atomic Yes because it's two different actions. What does "Ghost Cut" do if you paste multiple times? Paste the cut text first and then what? The previous thing in your c…

It’s not unreasonable to suggest that text editors need a nice atomic move (but personally I don’t see the need for it)

Re: Ghost Cut – Or why Cut and Paste is broken everywhere

#103

Post by kmoser »

Diogenesian wrote: post #7

This reads to me as the default behavior of "cut" makes certain usability choices that don't gel with the author's personal mental model and workflow, which is of course totally valid. But it is odd to see things described as a "flaw" instead of a choice. The most glaring example seems to be the first: typically an accidental cut was intended to be a copy, not a delete, so leaving the text in your clipboard is a sens…

Agreed, I like being able to cut or copy text into the clipboard, undo a few recent edits (Ctrl/Cmd+Z), then paste the contents of the clipboard in a new spot. The author's proposal would prevent me from doing that, at least without adding intermediate steps like pasting the clipboard into a temp file before undoing.

Re: Ghost Cut – Or why Cut and Paste is broken everywhere

#106

Post by gbalduzzi »

abanana wrote: post #74

Please don't change expected behaviour! Excel does, as the author mentions, and it's a massive pain in the arse because it doesn't do what it should. The "cut" action is supposed to immediately put it into the clipboard, so you can paste that text into other programs if you want to. Thinking you know better, is really not a reason to break your users' expectations and normal workflow. It's quite possible your idea is…

Exactly.

You also open the gates to many edge cases where I don't know what it is supposed to happen.

What if I never paste the cut text? Does it stay faded?

What if I copy some other text, maybe on another app, before pasting? Do I paste the faded text or the new copied one?

Also, as you mention, I hate that you can't paste on a different program given the fact that the clipboard is untouched when you press ctrl-x

The gain is so minimal for a lot of headaches if you don't follow the happy path

Re: Ghost Cut – Or why Cut and Paste is broken everywhere

#107

Post by allarm »

arijun wrote: post #68
windward wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>paste multiple times Because you're trying to 'copy' it? This feels baby-duck-y. No given mental model is more right than another. There's already not even a consistent model, because: >Cut is copy and delete So copy and delete! Or, in Vim and Emacs, just delete!

> Or, in Vim and Emacs, just delete! Off topic, but that’s actually my biggest pet peeve vim. You copy text one place to overwrite some other text, you delete the existing text and they you go to paste and… the buffer has been overwritten. It makes so much more sense to require users to hit the obvious, composable ‘yd’ in the cases they want to copy than an arcane incantation in the cases they want to overwrite text.

_d

D

_dd

Re: Ghost Cut – Or why Cut and Paste is broken everywhere

#108

Post by Someone »

Ignoring whether this is a good idea:

- can this be made to work cross-application? You would have to be able to detect that a paste happened somewhere

- you can’t know whether a user wants to paste the same text twice. How do you handle that in the UI?

- how do you handle the case where, after copying, the user changes their mind, and never pastes the text?

Re: Ghost Cut – Or why Cut and Paste is broken everywhere

#109

Post by wodenokoto »

It's quite a different mental model the author has from me.

Cut moves text from the application into a separate application, the clipboard.

So just like if I edit in application A, change to application B and hit undo, I do not expect undo to affect A, I also do not expect undo to affect the pasteboard.

The Ghost Cut works a bit closer to how Excel works, which constantly trips me up. In Excel, I might copy a cell, do some edits, then paste, only to learn that nothing was actually copied. In Excel, copy and cut makes a reference to a selection, and if that selection has been undone or changed at the time of paste, there simply isn't anything to paste.

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