Gnome Developers Re-Implement Middle-Click Paste

http://news.softpedia.com/news/GNOME-Developers-Re-Implement-Middle-Click-Paste-380352.shtml

by hanuca • 13 years ago

53 39 13 years ago

news.softpedia.com

hanuca• 13 years ago

Hoooooray! Victory, at least for now...

thristian• 13 years ago

A friend of mine complained on Google+ and attracted the attention of a GNOME developer who said that (a) it would be put back, and (b) one of the reasons it was scheduled for removal was that the Wayland graphics server doesn't have the notion of separate "selection" and "clipboard" shared-data.

I imagine there's a lot of resistance at the idea of including decades-old X11 quirks into the fresh, modern UI era, and I can totally understand that. The best argument I've heard for supporting something like it is to consider it an interruptible drag-and-drop operation. That is to say, in every scenario where you can select something then drag and drop it into another place, or another application, you should be able to select that thing then middle-click on the destination for exactly the same effect. The best argument for having this behaviour (at least as an option) is that it's more accessible than traditional drag-and-drop for users with certain mobility impairments, and fully-able users can use it to do things they can't normally do with drag-and-drop, like shuffle through windows to find the intended target. It also piggybacks on a lot of infrastructure (format negotiation, etc.) that needs to exist for drag-and-drop anyway, and lastly it makes old-school users happy. :)

JulianMorrison• 13 years ago

The other argument is that the conventional meaning is different. Drag and drop is universally a "cut and paste" operation. If I drag text I expect it to re-position where dropped. Select-and-middle-click is a "copy and paste" operation.

derefr• 13 years ago

Drag and drop is universally a "cut and paste" operation.

Unless the source is read-only. You can select text from the web and then drag-and-drop that selection into a text editor, and you won't change the web.

vhf• 13 years ago

Drag and drop is universally a "cut and paste" operation.

Unless you are using Gnome and the origin and destination of your drag and drop are on two different devices. In which case it will copy instead of cut.

Shorel• 13 years ago

Drag and drop is universally a "cut and paste" operation.

It changes to "copy and paste" if you keep the Ctrl key pressed. The cursor changes and adds a plus sign to indicate this.

So it is flexible in that regard.

chatman• 13 years ago

Why fix if it ain't broke? I don't think this Wayland port is needed.

Would be better to spend engineering effort to add more features to GNOME and make the existing experience smoother.

slurry3• 13 years ago

X-infterfaced Linux has been failing to make a dent in end user space for two decades. Non-X unices have been highly successful in end user space (various Aplle and Goodle offerings, not to mention set top boxes etc.)

I don't necessarily think Wayland is going to set the world on fire, but the urge to dump X is based on a solid inference.

simias• 13 years ago

I don't consider middle-click paste a quirk but rather a very useful feature I find myself missing all the time when I'm on Windows.

The bug in my humble opinion is having separate "selection" and "clipboard" buffers, but I just use a small util in the background to always keep both synchronized.

By the way, do people really use drag-n-drop on a daily basis? The few times I need to use that (mostly on windows) it's a really painful and awkward operation. You have to select what you want, click, then find the target (possibly minimized or hidden or something) and then drop at the right position while maintaining the mouse button pressed all the while. That's pretty terrible user experience as far as I'm concerned, but maybe I'm just doing it wrong/not used to it.

bgruber2• 13 years ago

The bug in my humble opinion is having separate "selection" and "clipboard" buffers, but I just use a small util in the background to always keep both synchronized.

i actually appreciate this, because somteimes I really do want to copy something, do some other things, and then paste. Can't have the selection buffer overwriting the clipboard buffer.

By the way, do people really use drag-n-drop on a daily basis? ... while maintaining the mouse button pressed all the while.

Agreed, especially in the age of the trackpad, on which drag and drop is far more difficult.

Pxtl2• 13 years ago

Still, I like the Windows idea that everything on the middle-mouse is related to navigating the viewport - scrollwheel, drag the view, etc. This consistency is pleasant.

While I love the convenience offered by the Linux selection-clipboard, it seems to mess with the design-language of the mouse. Maybe the Gnome team could keep the feature but move it to a new mouse action?

Moving the selection-paste to Meta+Lclick would get my vote. Would be a little bit painful transition, but would keep the feature while freeing up the middle-click for a role more consistent with its other functions.

And yeah, inter-app drag-and-drop is nightmarish because it's so hard to switch-tasks and scroll to the target without releasing the mouse. It's just not a useful interaction and 90% of the time I drag-and-drop something on Windows it's accidental anyways - it's a feature that belongs in a dustbin.

jlarocco• 13 years ago

I use drag-n-drop all the time when I'm going through my photos. I open the memory card's picture directory in XnView, and with the directory browser on the left and a large preview on the right, I go through the pics and drag the "bad ones" into the trash.

I actually made a program to help automate the task, and it used the keyboard, but I always end up using XnView and drag-n-drop anyway.

pdkl953• 13 years ago

the Wayland graphics server doesn't have the notion of separate "selection" and "clipboard" shared-data.

I was almost warming up to the mess that is Wayland (though I still think "fixing X {server,extensions,whatever}" is a better idea). A decent case had been made that some areas (pixmap handling? already-client-side font stuff?), were in need of replacement.

Getting rid of "selection". though? WHY?! Compared everything else X does, it's not some performance concern. It is not even that complicated of a feature.

This, along with the bizarre "nobody uses X11 remotely" nonsense that is usually said when wayland is discussed is starting to smell like a microsoft-style "Not Invented Here" syndrome.

sigh

Selection-copy was the most important "required feature" for me, next to network transparency. If they are also messing with virtual desktops or few other minor window manager features, I guess I'll be staying with the version of x.org I am currently running. to go alongside my already-very-old windowmanager (E16).

Qantourisc• 13 years ago

I love middle select too, I use it often ! Also can be used to work around copy-paste issues, or quickly copy pasting without formatting !

keeperofdakeys• 13 years ago

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=x_wayland...

(Take note of the x remoting content).

The thing is, we don't really "use" X these days, it's more just a wrapper. Toolkits and direct rendering do most of the work, that used to be reserved for X. So Wayland was designed to cut out all the cruft, and make everything nicer.

I must admit, two clipboards can be nice, but a single clipboard is probably sufficient. Maybe we can copy-paste without requiring the original program to stay open.

bitwize• 13 years ago

I was almost warming up to the mess that is Wayland (though I still think "fixing X {server,extensions,whatever}" is a better idea). A decent case had been made that some areas (pixmap handling? already-client-side font stuff?), were in need of replacement.

Wayland is actually much, much simpler than X11. Most desktop users actually don't care about network transparency -- they want a fast, smooth local display. Network transparency is not needed. Better to take it out, and provide an extension module for those who want it -- based on something like RDP which is much more efficient than X11.

Remember that the object for comparison here is a Mac, which presents a perfect tear-free composited display running at 60fps. Compared to that, the old clunky X desktop is difficult to go back to.

Can't we all just accept the idea that Mac OS X curbstomping every other desktop Unix in terms of market- and mind-share might mean Apple got right what everyone else got wrong? Command-X, Command-C, Command-V. They're always there, they always do the right thing. Oh, and the presence of a dedicated "Command" key is another Apple-ism we should have adopted; modern Linux, following the lead of Windows, uses Ctrl. Which is just wrong and silly because you frequently do want to send Ctrl-C to a console program -- so terminal emulators remap the clipboard commands to Ctrl-Shift-X, etc.... Whatever.

Desktop Unix, except for Mac OS X, is a mess. Doing anything but throwing it all out and starting from scratch, emulating the cleaner, superior model of Mac OS X is falling prey to the sunk-cost fallacy.

dhimes3• 13 years ago

I know it's possible, but I honestly don't know how to copy between instances of vi without it. This has been a huge convenience for me and I'm glad they are keeping it.

kps• 13 years ago

If you are using vim and it is built appropriately, the "* register reflects the contents of the primary selection and the "+ register the contents of the clipboard. See :help registers

roberto2• 13 years ago

I have these lines in my .Xresources file (which is sourced by .xinitrc with `xrdb -merge "${HOME}/.Xresources"`):

Shift<Key>Insert: insert-selection(CLIPBOARD) \n\ <Key>Insert: insert-selection(PRIMARY) \n\ Shift<Btn2Up>: insert-selection(CLIPBOARD) \n\ Shift<Btn1Down>: select-start() \n\ Shift<Btn1Motion>: select-extend() \n\ Shift<Btn1Up>: select-end(CLIPBOARD)

This way, if I select something with the mouse while pressing shift it will go to the clipboard. I can shift-select text on the terminal and paste to Firefox using ctrl-V, for example. And I can copy something from Firefox using ctrl-C and paste it on vim using shift-insert.

Normal selection goes to the other clipboard, so I can paste it using middle button or just clicking insert.

tekacs• 13 years ago

There's something delightfully quaint about a world in which middle-click paste warrants a news article. :)

Caveats: - I'm amongst the folks rejoicing. :) - Yes, Apple products and Win8 sometimes attract similar attention to detail. - I recognise the technical context, too (see thristian's comment).

Still quaint. :P

username42• 13 years ago

Good work, Long life to Ubuntu-Gnome, my favorite desktop since Ubuntu introduced Unity.

lockyc• 13 years ago

Thank goodness! Middle click paste drives me crazy. ... Although i dont use gnome

stuaxo• 13 years ago

"The controversial desktop environment" .. things were not always thus. (gnome user since 0.9).

bgruber2• 13 years ago

middle-click paste is so plainly useful that I often find myself completely baffled that other windowing environments haven't copied it.

antocv• 13 years ago

Especially having two buffers is a productivity booster, if I would count how many times per day I take some data from a source window/view with ctrl+C and another one with selecting it, then pasting one of them with ctrtl+v and the other one at the correct position with middleclick it would be quite alot. Like I just did with this text. Then I have klipboard which keeps both of the buffers in a history, so awesome Im baffled how my collegues at windows can even do their job.

Especially useful in terminals where ctrl+shift+c/v is awkward to press compared to a middleclick.

Gnome Developers Re-Implement Middle-Click Paste

Related Stories