I just want a universal clipboard that works.
Ghost Cut – Or why Cut and Paste is broken everywhere
71–80 of 162 posts
Re: Ghost Cut – Or why Cut and Paste is broken everywhere
#72"Ghost cut" _does_ exist in VSCode, Word, GDocs, etc., it's called a move and you do it by dragging selected text with your mouse.
Re: Ghost Cut – Or why Cut and Paste is broken everywhere
#73Earlier 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.
Spending enough time drinking the kool aid means I know at least 3 ways to use registers to avoid that, and practically end up using none of them
Re: Ghost Cut – Or why Cut and Paste is broken everywhere
#74Please 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 a good one, but it's not worth breaking it for the majority, to improve it for a few.
Re: Ghost Cut – Or why Cut and Paste is broken everywhere
#75This is similar to how Explorer / Finder handle cut: The file isn't moved until paste.
Re: Ghost Cut – Or why Cut and Paste is broken everywhere
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you used a clipboard manager? There are tons that you can configure with notifications and indicators, so you don't have to that.
Having to install yet more software seems worse than the problem you’re suggesting it should solve.
Even windows has this software out of the box because it is so obviously useful
Re: Ghost Cut – Or why Cut and Paste is broken everywhere
#77I don't think I've ever had a problem with this. The big problem I've had with cut/copy/paste has been with Windows and software inspired by it, which is that copying without selecting any text blows away the clipboard (because you've chosen to cut or copy the empty string).
Like yes, I get that in a strict engineering sense, that is the correct and least surprising behavior. But it's stupid and virtually guaranteed to not be what I wanted to happen. My expectation is what macOS does in this event -- nothing.
Re: Ghost Cut – Or why Cut and Paste is broken everywhere
#78What I'd like seen addressed is the insistence of every app trying it's best to include formatting information, even so far as to include table cells formatting data in the clipboard. I've found copying this format info useful maybe twice(?) in my 50+ year life and otherwise it is a huge PITA. Including having email clients crash or refuse to properly undo weird table formats that unintentionally get pasted over. Ins…
Some applications provide a "paste without formatting" that is distinct from "paste" but often that one removes things like hyperlinks, which you generally want to keep.
The "paste" idiom has been thoroughly stressed to the limit. Should "paste" paste just text? Should it include text color? Should it in crude text background color? Should it include typeface? Should it include text size? Should it include attached metadata like hyperlinks? Should it include other stuff around and peripheral to the text?
Re: Ghost Cut – Or why Cut and Paste is broken everywhere
#79Star didn't have cut/copy/paste. Instead it had ‘copy to’ and ‘move to’ operations on the current selection, more like today's drag-and-drop. Some influential people decided that invisible fragile clipboard state was better than a copy/move-in-progress state.
Probably was seen as too modal. Modal UI was very unfashionable for a while.
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Re: Ghost Cut – Or why Cut and Paste is broken everywhere
#80Cut and Paste isn't broken, Copy is broken (in windows). My muscle memory for copying and pasting text is now: ctrl-c, ctrl-c, ctrl-c, ctrl-v.