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Oh right, it uses the operating system clipboard? That's kinda handy. In other terminal editors I sometimes have to do a slight pause, to work out whether I'm

by orra 6y ago

Oh right, it uses the operating system clipboard? That's kinda handy. In other terminal editors I sometimes have to do a slight pause, to work out whether I'm using the editor-in-built yank chain, or pasting from operating system clipboard using the not-as-standard-as-Ctrl-V terminal emulator binding, Ctrl-Shift-V.

spanhandler 6y ago
I came to Mac relatively late and only after years of using Windows and Linux, but I really wish everyone else would copy Mac’s default English keyboard layout & shortcuts. Super+x/c/v for cut, copy, and paste, their relatively ergonomic combos for typing m-dash and various “special” characters using option/alt, and their screenshot shortcuts, especially.
- gruez 6y ago
  >but I really wish everyone else would copy Mac’s default English keyboard layout & shortcuts. Super+x/c/v for cut, copy, and paste Isn't this something that benefits mainly developers, at the expense of everyone else? Most people don't use the terminal, so they don't have any use for control-x/c/v. At the same time super-x/c/v is less ergonomic than control, at least for me. With control I can use my pinky + index finger, which is much more comfortable than using super, which requires me to awkardly use my thumb + index.
  - spanhandler 6y ago
    Admittedly it’s better on Mac keyboards, with Super directly next to the space bar. Less strain and movement to hit that with my left thumb than to stretch down to ctrl (if I hadn’t mapped caps lock to control). The rest of the layout is wildly better than any other I know of for composing text in English, which is a thing you’d think every default layout would be good at, but they’re not. Better than “standard” layouts on Linux and Windows, better than the “international” layout, and better than “alt-gr” layouts, at least. [edit] every default layout for English, I mean. I wouldn’t expect a default layout for another language to be great for composing English text, obviously.
    - gruez 6y ago
      >Admittedly it’s better on Mac keyboards, with Super directly next to the space bar. Less strain and movement to hit that with my left thumb than to stretch down to ctrl I'm not sure what you mean by "stretch down to ctrl". On a standard keyboard, with the control key in the bottom left corner, all you need to do is rotate your left hand slightly and use your pinky to press it. Doing so also puts your index finger in position to press the x/c/v keys. On a mac keyboard this is less doable because the control key is swapped with the fn key, but it also doesn't make pressing the command key any easier, as you still have to bend your left thumb to reach the command key (this is most apparent with c/v). >The rest of the layout is wildly better than any other I know of for composing text in English is this on non-US layouts? Looking at this https://store.storeimages.cdn-apple.com/4982/as-images.apple.com/is/MLA22LL?wid=1144&hei=1144&fmt=jpeg&qlt=95&op_usm=0.5,0.5&.v=1496944005839 https://store.storeimages.cdn-apple.com/4982/as-images.apple... or https://store.storeimages.cdn-apple.com/4982/as-images.apple.com/is/MQ052?wid=1144&hei=1144&fmt=jpeg&qlt=95&op_usm=0.5,0.5&.v=1495129815011 https://store.storeimages.cdn-apple.com/4982/as-images.apple..., the rest of the keyboard looks pretty close to standard ansi layout.
      - spanhandler 6y ago
        The cmd version with the modifier directly next to the spacebar involves no wrist rotation at all. I tried it to check before making my last post, and my hand feels way more tense doing ctrl+z/x/c than cmd+z/x/c, using a desktop PC keyboard for the former to make it fair. I can also move back into homerow position faster. If you’ve got super directly next to the spacebar, it’s both faster and causes less strain, as far as I can tell. Granted it’s a roughly neutral or very slightly worse change if super is between alt and ctrl. Again, I did the standard Linux/windows thing for like 15 years before switching to Mac, so I don’t think I prefer it just due to familiarity. [edit] the key to their layout being so good for writing is how Option/Alt is used. Option plus a character will often get you a common modified version of that character that’s very useful (so you can type, say, façade, or a —, quickly and easily). Holding option changes practically every key on the keyboard, and shift+option does it again to a different set of chars. They’re not perfectly discoverable and some are compose keys (but visible on the screen, not hidden as a key that seems to do nothing!), but if you forget where the cent sign or euro or or pound are it’s easy to remember they’re in the numbers somewhere near dollar and find them again in a second or two. [edit edit] the international layout can be better for some people but is basically obsoleted by Mac’s “hold a key and see accented versions to choose from” functionality, and alt-gr is similar to what Mac’s standard English layout does, except worse.
alpaca128 6y ago
And then there's Vim which, depending on how it was built for the respective distro, doesn't seem to accept any way to copy or paste text. As a daily Vim user I find this to be a huge mistake in terms of user friendliness; Vim provides ways to set the clipboard as default register and other quality of life improvements, but until then a beginner has to figure out some of the weirdest keybindings to make it work, or even recompile the program because that specific distro didn't include xclip support for some reason. It is infuriating.
- simias 6y ago
  I understand your practical frustration, but it can be very tricky with terminal apps to reliably interact with the X display. It's basically a completely foreign interface that requires the environment to be setup properly. But in general I just install gvim (even if I only use Vim in the terminal) since it normally means that it'll have proper X support.
  - kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
    Middle click paste should "just work" and be transparent to terminal apps. It's not encouraging that vim is willing and able to break this in its default settings.
    - simias 6y ago
      I could be misremembering but I believe that middle-click paste just makes the terminal feed the contents of the X selection to stdin of the running process. I could be wrong (because there's so much arcane knowledge in terminal emulators that I won't even pretend to have scratched the surface) but I'm not sure if Vi(m) can even tell where the input comes from. Well, maybe it could by using the speed at which the characters come in I suppose, although even that might end up being unreliable over remote connections and the like. In my humble opinion expecting good X integration for a terminal application is bound to result in frustration. I use vim in the terminal but I also never use the mouse and I configure Vim not to interact with the X selection unless I specifically instruct it to using "*. If you want better integration with the graphical environment why not just use gvim? That's what it's for.

by orra 6y ago

spanhandler 6y ago

I came to Mac relatively late and only after years of using Windows and Linux, but I really wish everyone else would copy Mac’s default English keyboard layout & shortcuts. Super+x/c/v for cut, copy, and paste, their relatively ergonomic combos for typing m-dash and various “special” characters using option/alt, and their screenshot shortcuts, especially.

gruez 6y ago
>but I really wish everyone else would copy Mac’s default English keyboard layout & shortcuts. Super+x/c/v for cut, copy, and paste Isn't this something that benefits mainly developers, at the expense of everyone else? Most people don't use the terminal, so they don't have any use for control-x/c/v. At the same time super-x/c/v is less ergonomic than control, at least for me. With control I can use my pinky + index finger, which is much more comfortable than using super, which requires me to awkardly use my thumb + index.
- spanhandler 6y ago
  Admittedly it’s better on Mac keyboards, with Super directly next to the space bar. Less strain and movement to hit that with my left thumb than to stretch down to ctrl (if I hadn’t mapped caps lock to control). The rest of the layout is wildly better than any other I know of for composing text in English, which is a thing you’d think every default layout would be good at, but they’re not. Better than “standard” layouts on Linux and Windows, better than the “international” layout, and better than “alt-gr” layouts, at least. [edit] every default layout for English, I mean. I wouldn’t expect a default layout for another language to be great for composing English text, obviously.
  - gruez 6y ago
    >Admittedly it’s better on Mac keyboards, with Super directly next to the space bar. Less strain and movement to hit that with my left thumb than to stretch down to ctrl I'm not sure what you mean by "stretch down to ctrl". On a standard keyboard, with the control key in the bottom left corner, all you need to do is rotate your left hand slightly and use your pinky to press it. Doing so also puts your index finger in position to press the x/c/v keys. On a mac keyboard this is less doable because the control key is swapped with the fn key, but it also doesn't make pressing the command key any easier, as you still have to bend your left thumb to reach the command key (this is most apparent with c/v). >The rest of the layout is wildly better than any other I know of for composing text in English is this on non-US layouts? Looking at this https://store.storeimages.cdn-apple.com/4982/as-images.apple.com/is/MLA22LL?wid=1144&hei=1144&fmt=jpeg&qlt=95&op_usm=0.5,0.5&.v=1496944005839 https://store.storeimages.cdn-apple.com/4982/as-images.apple... or https://store.storeimages.cdn-apple.com/4982/as-images.apple.com/is/MQ052?wid=1144&hei=1144&fmt=jpeg&qlt=95&op_usm=0.5,0.5&.v=1495129815011 https://store.storeimages.cdn-apple.com/4982/as-images.apple..., the rest of the keyboard looks pretty close to standard ansi layout.
    - spanhandler 6y ago
      The cmd version with the modifier directly next to the spacebar involves no wrist rotation at all. I tried it to check before making my last post, and my hand feels way more tense doing ctrl+z/x/c than cmd+z/x/c, using a desktop PC keyboard for the former to make it fair. I can also move back into homerow position faster. If you’ve got super directly next to the spacebar, it’s both faster and causes less strain, as far as I can tell. Granted it’s a roughly neutral or very slightly worse change if super is between alt and ctrl. Again, I did the standard Linux/windows thing for like 15 years before switching to Mac, so I don’t think I prefer it just due to familiarity. [edit] the key to their layout being so good for writing is how Option/Alt is used. Option plus a character will often get you a common modified version of that character that’s very useful (so you can type, say, façade, or a —, quickly and easily). Holding option changes practically every key on the keyboard, and shift+option does it again to a different set of chars. They’re not perfectly discoverable and some are compose keys (but visible on the screen, not hidden as a key that seems to do nothing!), but if you forget where the cent sign or euro or or pound are it’s easy to remember they’re in the numbers somewhere near dollar and find them again in a second or two. [edit edit] the international layout can be better for some people but is basically obsoleted by Mac’s “hold a key and see accented versions to choose from” functionality, and alt-gr is similar to what Mac’s standard English layout does, except worse.

alpaca128 6y ago

And then there's Vim which, depending on how it was built for the respective distro, doesn't seem to accept any way to copy or paste text. As a daily Vim user I find this to be a huge mistake in terms of user friendliness; Vim provides ways to set the clipboard as default register and other quality of life improvements, but until then a beginner has to figure out some of the weirdest keybindings to make it work, or even recompile the program because that specific distro didn't include xclip support for some reason. It is infuriating.

simias 6y ago
I understand your practical frustration, but it can be very tricky with terminal apps to reliably interact with the X display. It's basically a completely foreign interface that requires the environment to be setup properly. But in general I just install gvim (even if I only use Vim in the terminal) since it normally means that it'll have proper X support.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  Middle click paste should "just work" and be transparent to terminal apps. It's not encouraging that vim is willing and able to break this in its default settings.
  - simias 6y ago
    I could be misremembering but I believe that middle-click paste just makes the terminal feed the contents of the X selection to stdin of the running process. I could be wrong (because there's so much arcane knowledge in terminal emulators that I won't even pretend to have scratched the surface) but I'm not sure if Vi(m) can even tell where the input comes from. Well, maybe it could by using the speed at which the characters come in I suppose, although even that might end up being unreliable over remote connections and the like. In my humble opinion expecting good X integration for a terminal application is bound to result in frustration. I use vim in the terminal but I also never use the mouse and I configure Vim not to interact with the X selection unless I specifically instruct it to using "*. If you want better integration with the graphical environment why not just use gvim? That's what it's for.