Re: 6 API-ish issues

[Thomas Leonard <tal00r ecs soton ac uk>]

On Fri, Feb 01, 2002 at 10:52:00AM -0500, Owen Taylor wrote:

[ primary vs clipboard ]

> A clipboard user would do:
> 
>  - Select text
>  - hit C-c
>  - triple click on entry (or click on entry and type C-a)
>  - hit C-v
> 
> Which can be done easily with one hand on the keyboard and one on 
> the mouse. While, with PRIMARY and emacs keybindings, you have to do:
> 
>  - Select text
>  - Click on entry
>  - Type C-a C-k (moving hand back to keyboard from mouse for the C-k)
>  - Middle click (moving hand back to mouse from keyboard,
>    probably bumping the mouse enough you have to realign it with
>    the entry.)

Is 'emacs keybindings' a special mode? The default allows C-u to clear,
like all other Unix programs. Also, you're assuming that the clipboard
user has set up Windows bindings (C-a to select all) whereas the primary
user is using emacs bindings (C-a to move to start).

That said, and separate from this dicussion, I'd like to propose
Shift+button-2 for replace-with-primary. Similarly, C-z for
replace-with-clipboard (or maybe some other key, but I've found C-z
handy in the past for this).

Also mentioned elsewhere was the idea that the clipboard is easier for new
users than primary. While it may be easier for Windows users, I don't
think it's easier for a completely new user.

The clipboard involves hidden state with complicated behaviour. Consider
what happens if I select some data in an application and copy to the
clipboard. There is no visual indication that anything has happened and no
clue as to what will happen when I later paste.

Indeed, what happens depends on a number of things:

- If the source document is still loaded, or it is closed but the same
  copy of the application is still loaded, then the original data is
  pasted (but, if the data has been edited, the clipboard still contains
  the old copy).

- If the source application has since exited then, depending on the
  application, pasting might either do nothing or paste a fixed-text
  version of the source (this may be different from what you would get if
  the app were still loaded; for example, Excel rounds the numbers to
  display precision when the source document has been closed, but uses
  full precision when it is still open, IIRC).

Primary on the other hand is obvious. It pastes the currently highlighted
text.


-- 
Thomas Leonard			http://rox.sourceforge.net
tal00r ecs soton ac uk		tal197 users sourceforge net