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The alternative, as used e.g. by the Xerox Star, was select-and-copy/move. The advantage over cut-and-paste is that you don't have invisible fragile state. How
by kps 2y ago
The alternative, as used e.g. by the Xerox Star, was select-and-copy/move. The advantage over cut-and-paste is that you don't have invisible fragile state.
However, the Star implementation had copy and move modes (select source, COPY, mouse to destination, CLICK) and Tesler hated modes. I don't know why Star didn't use the modeless version (select source, mouse to destination, COPY).
- Retric 2y agoTo be able to do copy (edit) paste (edit) paste you need independent storage of what’s copied. Move requires new UI sate where cut is just Copy (Edit:Delete). With Undo cut is safe enough and there’s likely something more critical to work on than a Move UI. Also, I’ve seen some terrible move UI. It may seem cool to have a big floating blob of text follow the curser but that doesn’t work well when you want to move multiple pages or across multiple pages.
- layer8 2y agoIf you want to replace by pasting, you'd lose the first selection by selecting what you want to have replaced. Which means you'd need different selection modes depending on whether you are selecting the source or the target of the copy/move. Furthermore, mainting the original (source) selection while preparing the insertion point (target) of the copy/move is also fraught with some fragility.
- kps 2y ago> If you want to replace by pasting, you'd lose the first selection by selecting what you want to have replaced. Yes, that's the tradeoff; you'd have to delete that separately. This would be quite close the X11 primary selection and middle-click paste. I think that works reasonably well on its own, but trying to provide both models as X11 does is a mess.
- detourdog 2y agoThe mother of all demos had a chorded keyboard, a mouse,a regular keyboard, and video conferencing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos
- sleepybrett 2y agoI love that piano like chorded keyboard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorded_keyboard#/media/File:Xerox_Alto_keyset.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorded_keyboard#/media/File:X...) from the alto. I think it's still and interesting UI concept but I think it should/could be adapted to a foot pedal design, chords would be constrained to 2 inputs though unless maybe two of the inuputs were directly side by side then you could expand to three. Organists know what's up ;)
- AlbertCory 2y agoThere was one guy at Xerox (Smokey Wallace, RIP) who loved the keyset and could type like a mad man on it. Everyone else just put it away and ignored it, until MazeWar came along.
- detourdog 2y agoI thought about it a lot and realize the design was swallowed by control key shift combinations.
- AlbertCory 2y agoYou're talking about the keyset. Most Alto users didn't even use theirs until MazeWar came along. Then tech support was flooded with bad keysets that people wanted to start using.
- bee_rider 2y agoDoes anyone actually use cut-and-paste? Copy-paste-delete is the less scary option, right? There’s a reason copy usually gets the C shortcuts I think.
- kbolino 2y agoI use cut and paste pretty often. Besides giving visual feedback that the operation actually worked, it also makes it easy to move things around, including between files.