Re: [Usability] Copy & paste problem

["Simon Howard" <fraggle gmail com>]

On 5/26/06, Francesco Stablum <stablum gmail com> wrote:
>  The problem is that there are two clipboard buffers and it can be very
> annoying and conterintuitive to new unix/gnome users. Why not making a
> single buffer?

Most users new to Unix are unlikely to know about the PRIMARY
selection pasting method (select + middle click).  The problems are
that you can select text to make a PRIMARY-style "copy" operation, but
doing a "paste" using edit-paste will paste the CLIPBOARD selection
instead, and similarly a middle-click will paste the PRIMARY
selection, which doesn't work if you did edit-copy.

The problem is, the only way to combine the two systems would involve
copying to the clipboard whenever text is selected.  This would make
things even more confusing than they already are - imagine someone who
selects some text in application 1, selects "edit-copy", then goes to
application 2, selects some text (to replace) and hits "edit-paste".
Nothing happens, because the clipboard was overwritten the second time
he selected any text.

I'd say that users are unlikely to stumble across the PRIMARY select
paste method anyway.  It doesn't interfere with the normal
copy-and-paste method, which is what most Unix newbies are going to
use.

--
Simon Howard
http://www.soulsphere.org/