Re: Back to copy/paste.
Re: Back to copy/paste.
- Subject: Re: Back to copy/paste.
- From: email@hidden
- Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 19:34:17 +0000
How a preference setting? I'd be happy to specify a personal preference and then sleep comfortably in the consistent bed I've made. I'd set if for Mac-like and move on. Others would be revolted by that, so let them pick the other way...
Mick.
-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Ben Byer <email@hidden>
> Far be it from me to come to the defense of our sucky cut'n'paste
> handling, but I must pick a nit or two, because it's actually relevant:
>
> On Apr 15, 2008, at 11:16 AM, Adam D. I. Kramer wrote:
>
> > The basic issue is that currently, the text has to remain selected
> > in X11
> > when you PASTE the text into a non-X11 app. This is inconsistent
> > with other
> > Mac behavior (when you hit copy, it copies and you can paste
> > whenever unless
> > you copy something else)
>
> The fundamental problem here is an impedance mismatch between X11 and
> Cocoa. In X11, when you "copy" something, it actually just stores a
> "promise" -- a pointer to that data. The data isn't actually pushed
> anywhere until you paste, which causes data to be pulled from the
> first app. See e.g. http://www.jwz.org/doc/x-cut-and-paste.html for
> more info on this.
>
> On the other hand, in Cocoa, when you copy something, it copies all of
> that data to the NSPasteboard, and when you paste, it just pulls the
> data from the NSPasteboard.
>
> > and other X11 behavior (when you select something,
> > it is copied, and if deselected, you can still paste it until you
> > select
> > something else).
>
> Are you sure about this? Specifically, note that there are two
> different mechanisms inside of X11 for what we'd call copy and paste.
>
> Primary selection: This is what is currently selected. If you middle-
> click, it gets pasted -- which is to say if nothing is selected,
> nothing will get pasted.
>
> Clipboard: This is what data gets shoved into if you are in some
> editor and use its Copy command.
>
> This is actually part of the problem, because people have varying
> expectations of what should happen in OS X when you hit paste in e.g.
> TextEdit. Does it paste the contents of the primary selection, or of
> the clipboard? Right now I think it tries to guess what you want --
> if you have something selected, it'll paste that, otherwise it'll
> paste the clipboard. However, this runs contrary to your expectations
> (which are fair) -- do you have any ideas for a better way to handle
> this?
> -b
>
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