4 ms·

Are there different paste buffers depending on how it's activated?

eloisant 8y ago
Mouse-select and middle-click might be a different buffer, but other than that it's Ctrl+X/C/V. Only on terminal it's with SHIFT to avoid conflict the Ctrl+C that ends a command.
xenomachina 8y ago
This is actually an X11 thing - it predates Linux. Instead of "the clipboard" X has multiple clipboard-like things. In X terminology they are called "selections". There's an arbitrary number of them, but there are only two selections that are used by most apps: the "primary" selection and the "clipboard" selection. In most apps, the primary selection is populated merely by selecting something, while the clipboard selection is populated by some sort of explicit user action, like ctrl-C or a context menu. The clipboard selection is pasted with some other explicit action. Usually it's analogous to the way you copy to it, like ctrl-V, or a context menu. The primary selection is usually "pasted" with middle mouse button. Sometimes there's also a keyboard shortcut, and if there is it's often a modified form of the clipboard-selection's paste shortcut. Most people get confused by the fact that there is more than one "clipboardy thing". They copy to one, and then paste from the other and winner why their copy didn't work. The fact that there isn't a consistent action to get to each doesn't help. It is consistent if you stick to apps from the same "family" (eg: Gnome/gtk+ or KDE), except terminals never use ctrl key shortcuts. (Because control characters already mean something in terminals.)
- solarkraft 8y ago
  The elementary Terminal allows Ctrl+V to paste and I find it very convenient.
  - xenomachina 8y ago
    Interesting. I kind of paused when I wrote "never" because it's of course possible for a terminal to bind control-keys to arbitrary actions, but every terminal I've ever used on *nix (including Mac and Linux) just passes control-keys through by default. It's possible that some of them allow such bindings as an option, but I've never checked because I need to be able to send literal control-C and control-V to applications I run in the terminal. (Control-C is of course "break", and control-V is used in vim a lot.) This is one of the cases where I think the Mac approach happens to work out better than Linux (or Windows): by using ⌘ instead of control as the default shortcut modifier, there's no ambiguity about whether I'm talking to my terminal (copy, paste, spawn new window, etc.) or trying to send a control character. I don't know why the Linux community defacto-standardized on control keys rather than Super (or even Alt), given the high proportion of Linux users who are also terminal users.
  - RotsiserMho 8y ago
    Terminator does as well.
- scardine 8y ago
  > Most people get confused by the fact that there is more than one "clipboardy thing". They copy to one, and then paste from the other and wine when the operation fail. Let's not blame the (l)users. For example, by merely selecting the text you want to replace you may override the paste buffer content - this is a blatant POLA[1] violation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishmen...
  - xenomachina 8y ago
    > Let's not blame the (l)users. I don't think stating that "people get confused" is placing blame on one party or the other. That they get confused is a fact. I said nothing about whose fault that is. > For example, by merely selecting the text you want to replace you may override the paste buffer content It's a trade-off. Having the mere act of selecting text copy it to the primary selection is extremely convenient. There isn't any way to have that convenience without the downside that overwriting it is also easy. If you want to copy something and not have further selections overwrite it, you use the clipboard. This is like the trade-off of having a confirmation dialog or not. I wouldn't say "this is a blatant POLA violation". What surprises one person might seem obvious to another. There is only one intuitive user interface, everything else is learned. The confusion starts with the fact that people typically aren't told that the primary selection and the clipboard are two separate things (and by using the term "paste buffer" to ambiguously refer to one of them you're perpetuating this). Much of this misconception comes from the fact that more popular systems (Windows and Mac) only have the one clipboard, and people assume that whatever they learned first is universally true. Not knowing about the primary selection actually isn't a problem on its own, though. After all, if one only knows about the clipboard operations, but doesn't ever trigger pasting from the primary selection, then the fact that the primary selection even exists would be invisible to them. The clipboard selection on X works pretty much the same as the clipboard on other systems. The real problems start when people who believe there is only one "paste buffer" are then told, or discover, that they can "paste" using operations that actually paste from the primary selection rather than the clipboard. The worst part is that this doesn't fail outright, but instead seems to work, but inconsistently. Now they're confused, because there is no way to reconcile this behavior with their mental model that "this is another way to paste from the one and only clipboard".

Mouse-select and middle-click might be a different buffer, but other than that it's Ctrl+X/C/V. Only on terminal it's with SHIFT to avoid conflict the Ctrl+C that ends a command.

xenomachina 8y ago

This is actually an X11 thing - it predates Linux. Instead of "the clipboard" X has multiple clipboard-like things. In X terminology they are called "selections". There's an arbitrary number of them, but there are only two selections that are used by most apps: the "primary" selection and the "clipboard" selection. In most apps, the primary selection is populated merely by selecting something, while the clipboard selection is populated by some sort of explicit user action, like ctrl-C or a context menu. The clipboard selection is pasted with some other explicit action. Usually it's analogous to the way you copy to it, like ctrl-V, or a context menu. The primary selection is usually "pasted" with middle mouse button. Sometimes there's also a keyboard shortcut, and if there is it's often a modified form of the clipboard-selection's paste shortcut. Most people get confused by the fact that there is more than one "clipboardy thing". They copy to one, and then paste from the other and winner why their copy didn't work. The fact that there isn't a consistent action to get to each doesn't help. It is consistent if you stick to apps from the same "family" (eg: Gnome/gtk+ or KDE), except terminals never use ctrl key shortcuts. (Because control characters already mean something in terminals.)

solarkraft 8y ago
The elementary Terminal allows Ctrl+V to paste and I find it very convenient.
- xenomachina 8y ago
  Interesting. I kind of paused when I wrote "never" because it's of course possible for a terminal to bind control-keys to arbitrary actions, but every terminal I've ever used on *nix (including Mac and Linux) just passes control-keys through by default. It's possible that some of them allow such bindings as an option, but I've never checked because I need to be able to send literal control-C and control-V to applications I run in the terminal. (Control-C is of course "break", and control-V is used in vim a lot.) This is one of the cases where I think the Mac approach happens to work out better than Linux (or Windows): by using ⌘ instead of control as the default shortcut modifier, there's no ambiguity about whether I'm talking to my terminal (copy, paste, spawn new window, etc.) or trying to send a control character. I don't know why the Linux community defacto-standardized on control keys rather than Super (or even Alt), given the high proportion of Linux users who are also terminal users.
- RotsiserMho 8y ago
  Terminator does as well.
scardine 8y ago
> Most people get confused by the fact that there is more than one "clipboardy thing". They copy to one, and then paste from the other and wine when the operation fail. Let's not blame the (l)users. For example, by merely selecting the text you want to replace you may override the paste buffer content - this is a blatant POLA[1] violation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishmen...
- xenomachina 8y ago
  > Let's not blame the (l)users. I don't think stating that "people get confused" is placing blame on one party or the other. That they get confused is a fact. I said nothing about whose fault that is. > For example, by merely selecting the text you want to replace you may override the paste buffer content It's a trade-off. Having the mere act of selecting text copy it to the primary selection is extremely convenient. There isn't any way to have that convenience without the downside that overwriting it is also easy. If you want to copy something and not have further selections overwrite it, you use the clipboard. This is like the trade-off of having a confirmation dialog or not. I wouldn't say "this is a blatant POLA violation". What surprises one person might seem obvious to another. There is only one intuitive user interface, everything else is learned. The confusion starts with the fact that people typically aren't told that the primary selection and the clipboard are two separate things (and by using the term "paste buffer" to ambiguously refer to one of them you're perpetuating this). Much of this misconception comes from the fact that more popular systems (Windows and Mac) only have the one clipboard, and people assume that whatever they learned first is universally true. Not knowing about the primary selection actually isn't a problem on its own, though. After all, if one only knows about the clipboard operations, but doesn't ever trigger pasting from the primary selection, then the fact that the primary selection even exists would be invisible to them. The clipboard selection on X works pretty much the same as the clipboard on other systems. The real problems start when people who believe there is only one "paste buffer" are then told, or discover, that they can "paste" using operations that actually paste from the primary selection rather than the clipboard. The worst part is that this doesn't fail outright, but instead seems to work, but inconsistently. Now they're confused, because there is no way to reconcile this behavior with their mental model that "this is another way to paste from the one and only clipboard".