Re: [Usability] gnome-terminal shortcuts

[Steve Fosdick <lists pelvoux nildram co uk>]

Joachim Noreiko <jnoreiko yahoo com> wrote:

> SHIFT+CTRL+V is an awkward combination for
> something that's used frequently.

Probably the easiest way round that is to use selections rather than copy/paste.  If you select some text in the terminal window, or another application, then centre-click in the terminal window the selected text will be pasted in without needing to type any obscure key combinations.

I am not sure how we could make this feature more discoverable but is makes pasting things from one application to another much faster than having to pick "Copy" then "Paste" from a menu or go back to the keyboard to type two, two-key combinations.  In fact this one of the main things I miss whenever I have to use windows.  The other is pointer focus rather than click focus but pointer focus is now available with Tweak-UI from MS Powertoys.

Back to the point about control-key combinations and gnome-terminal, different programs running in the terminal will have different needs for being able to transmit control characters through from the keyboard.  Emacs, for example, uses just about all of them while many programs only need those control characters that have been assigned to functions within the POSIX tty interface, e.g. (intr, quit, erase, eof, eol, start, stop, susp, and sometimes others).  It would be possible to re-assign the POSIX tty functions to different control characters that weren't otherwise assigned by the HUI guidelines and we could even add menu options to send them.  As most of the people who use the terminal are experienced unix people though we would probably anoy them and I am not convinced that we would get much extra usablility for those who are not so computer oriented as they would probably avoid the command line anyway.

Steve.