Dealing with the Unix Copy and Paste Paradigm?

MolecularBear asks: "I grew up on Windows machines, using the ol' ctrl-c to copy and ctrl-v to paste. For the past few years I've been a hardcore Linux user, running it almost exclusively at home and at work. As I am sure you are all aware, highlighting text in Linux automatically performs a copy while the middle mouse button performs a paste. The Ctrl-c, Ctrl-v standard works in many applications, but not all. Lately I have begun to find the automatic highlight-copy to be annoying. As in, I'll highlight text to copy it, then realize I want to highlight a block of text for the purpose of deleting it. Of course, the second highlighting overwrites the first highlighting. I am curious about how other people accomplish their copy/paste needs. Any special setups, applications, or words of wisdom?"

Middle button?

[1000101]

"... performs a copy while the middle mouse button performs a paste."

I use a Mac you insensitive clod!

I grew up on VMS

[Anonymous Coward]

I keep hitting control-B to get previous commands, control-H to get to the beginning of the line, control-A to insert, control-E to get to the end of the line.

You think YOU have problems?!?! Think about poor poor pitiful me and my basement full of VAXen next time.

Ctrl-v Paradigm Shift

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, come to think of it...I have no idea what paradigm means.

Of course, no solution, but tale from trenches ...

[jrl87]

I have a similar problem ... but it doesn't involve deleting ... or linux (*gasp*) ....

When I'm on Windows I use Trillian which does this and i have a habit of highlighting as i read ... and sense i frequently copy links to send ... I am always pasting into Trillian ... unfortunately this has caused some problems with my gf when i highlight something that she doesn't need to see ....

Re:Middle button?

[ChipMonk]

So a Mac user can only paste?

Re:Common problem..

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll copy from my bookmarks URL with the solution for your problem:

http://goatse.cx

Ops, sorry. Wrong paste.

Re:Middle button?

[zelurxunil]

I use a Mac you insensitive clod!

My mac runs yellow dog linux with a three-button usb mouse, you insensitive clod!

Re:This is the correct behavior

[peterb]

If the people who built X designed a car, you'd have to start the engine by turning a crank, and accelerate by dangling more food to the hamster running in the flywheel attached to the driveshaft.

Adapting to stupid, broken, and braindead things -- such as the X cut and paste lossage -- is itself stupid. Here's a nickel, kid. Go buy yourself a real window manager and toolkit.

Re:I prefer the X way, kind of...

[nizo]

...but that would essentially require that the system read my mind.

But this could lead to other problems, such as your brain causing the machine to start browsing porn sites when that pretty secretary from across the hall walks in.

Re:Middle button?

[jpetts]

"... performs a copy while the middle mouse button performs a paste."

I use a Mac you insensitive clod!

If you only have one button, it is the middle button...

Here is the way it SHOULD work.

[dpbsmith]

Copy should be control-alt-caps-lock-tilde. Paste should be escape-escape-shift-F6 and click the first and fourth mouse buttons. This pastes in two copies, which is what I usually want. If, for some reason, I only want one copy, then after I pasteI just press PgDn on the numeric keypad with NumLock on, then hit SysRq twice in rapid succession (usually, within half a second). This conveniently deletes the second copy.

If your mouse has less than four buttons, it's broken. Get one with four buttons.

Simple. Clean. Logical. Convenient.

I like it this way so this is the right way.. I know what I like, and that makes me a UI expert.

If anyone wants it any other way, well, let them set it as a non-default user preference. And if the preference isn't honored by every application, well, tough.

Re:Pasting urls

[AppyPappy]

Using a mouse in unix? That's heresy.

Re:Common problem..

[Bryan_W]

What have YOU been doing to have that on your clipboard?

Re:What middle button?

[Brandybuck]

Just ignore your middle mouse button

Oooh! Just like Windows!

Re:The answer is ... jedit

[jeffy210]

"The answer is ... jedit

For a second I read "jedi"... I was like: What? Use the force to move bits now :)

Ctrl-L

[Anonymous Coward]

In Firefox, if you press Ctrl-L it will highlight the contents of the location bar in the current tab without copying it to the Middle-Click buffer. Then you can delete it with backspace, and Middle-Click in the now-empty location bar to paste the URL you previously highlighted with the mouse. (Works for me, anyway.)

To summarize:
1. Highlight URL with mouse.
1.5 Bring focus to Firefox window (TM)*.
2. Press Ctrl-L
3. Press Backspace
4. Middle-Click the mouse.
5. Press Enter to visit the URL you just pasted.
6. Generate advertising hits for website whose URL you just visited.
7. They profit!

*"window" is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation.

But wait...

[gillbates]

Wasn't this the very thing that open source was supposed to avoid?

You don't like the copy and paste works? Fine - you've got the source code, so just change the key codes and recompile.... right?

After a few frustrating hours of digging through source code, you finally find the keybindings. You change them, do a make.... and make crashes. So then you debug the make script and realize that you _ALSO_ need the source code to an obscure set of libraries. So you Google it, download the source, and it ALSO won't compile, because you've got the wrong compiler version.

So you figure, what the heck, it's time to upgrade gcc anyway. You download the sources, compile it, only to find that you also need to download the sources for the shared libraries as well. Tomorrow, you'll resume.

Well the weekend is coming up, and you've finally got the compiler and all its dependent sources together, and you start the compile. It actually compiles and installs just fine... And then you try to compile those obscure libraries and the compiler crashes. Turns out there's a kernel bug which means the new version of the compiler won't work with older kernels. You think, well heck, I'll just upgrade my kernel, and you ftp the sources.

So you configure your kernel and then type 'make clean; make dep; make install' and kick off the process; it dies - once again, your compiler segfaults. So now you've got an older kernel with no way to compile the new one...

So next weekend you decide that you're just going back to the old compiler. You rpm -i the compiler, and start the kernel compile process again... but the new kernel won't compile with the older compiler, and the newer compiler won't run on an older kernel....

You take a walk. It's nice to see the sunshine, and feel the breeze for a change.

It's tuesday and you've figured out that you can apply a few patches to your current compiler source, compile that, and then you'll be able to compile the most recent version of the compiler. So you do that. After you've built your intermediate version, you install it, build your kernel, and then recompile the newest compiler sources. After a reboot, you're able to successfully compile those obscure shared libraries, and rebuild your application.

Then you fire up your modified ctrl-c, ctrl-v enhanced software....

It segfaults. For no apparent reason.

So you Google the newsgroups, and lo and behold, someone else is having the same problem! But they don't know what the problem is.

Next week, your newsgroup buddy has found the problem. It turns out that a change in the way gcc handles memory allocation causes your obscure libraries to crash when compiled with the newer versions. They recommend using an older version of the compiler to build the software.

So you go back to the intermediate version, recompile, and finally, everything works great. For a few days, you've been enjoying the benefits of ctrl-c ctrl-v copy and paste. Life is good.

And then, you notice that KDE starts crashing at random for some unknown reason...

Re:Here is the way it SHOULD work.

[marvinalone]

You use emacs?

Re:If only Linux would get copy-paste right..

[Anonymous Coward]

How about this:
copy yourself out of your mama's basement
paste yourself into your own apartment

Re:Middle button?

[SRain315]

I've always thought it odd that Mac users don't have a middle button.

I _know_ they have a middle _finger_ because they show it to me all the time...

---

(Sure, mod it flamebait. I _am_ an insensitive clod.)

Re:This is a usability problem...

[Rysc]

"Why is "V" Paste, anyway?"

That's easy.

Needing a Copy key, C was selected. Because C stands for Copy. Needing a Cut key, X was selected. Because X is a convenient mnemonic for 'cut'. Needing a Paste key, V was selected. Because V stands for "It's next to the Copy key, dumbass."

No charge.

Re:Pasting urls

[jargoone]

The author should be getting more recognition.

Yeah, he should. Funny that you don't mention his name though, isn't it?

Re:Double bonus, since...

[Trejkaz]

But do you really think it's that easy to prank someone when you can see http://www.goat.cx/ in plain view? Seriously...

Re:try going back to windows

[mvdw]

Even worse is that triple-click doesn't work in Windows. I guess MS didn't invent it, unlike the double-click (see other /. story).