Cut, Copy, Paste Nightmare
Gordon Messmer
yinyang at eburg.com
Thu Jun 1 03:56:41 UTC 2006
Tim wrote:
>
> I find the Linux way of doing it a right pain in the bum.
There's no "linux way". X offers you the flexibility to use multiple
clipboards, but doesn't force you to use any one, particularly not one
that's a pain.
> First
> -----
> Linux: I have some document with a word I'd like to replace. I *have*
> to delete the word, find and highlight its new replacement, paste it
> into the document.
>
> Windows: Highlight the word to be replaced, and paste the new word over
> the top of it.
Yeah, you can do that in X, too. Use the clipboard (ctrl+c or "copy"
menu item) instead of the primary selection. If you behave like you're
using Windows, you'll get the results that you want.
> Second:
> Linux: I've highlighted some details from an e-mail that I want to put
> into the email configuration. I open up the configuration, and the
> first editable data in it is already highlighted by the application.
> It's now in the copy buffer, and I can't paste what *I* had previously
> copied.
If that's true, it's a bug in the application. The primary selection is
only supposed to be replaced if the user selects something. If you open
a window and something is automatically highlighted, it does not also
magically replace the primary selection.
Since I don't know of any application that does that, I'll note that if,
in Firefox, you press "Ctrl+l", the location bar's contents are
highlighted, but the primary selection is not replaced. If you try to
paste the primary selection, you'll get whatever was selected before you
pressed "Ctrl+l".
Even if the application that you're using *is* buggy, you should still
be able to copy text to the clipboard (rather than the primary
selection) before you open the configuration, and paste the text.
More information about the fedora-list
mailing list