Cut, Copy, Paste Nightmare

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Sat, 3 Jun 2006, Les Mikesell wrote:

> On Sat, 2006-06-03 at 05:43, Matthew Saltzman wrote:
>
>> Emacs has handled CTRL-C even in text mode since its inception.  That was
>> in the mid to late '70's.  In Emacs, CTRL-C is one form of command prefix.
>> Killing Emacs from within its window requires CTRL-X CTRL-C.
>
> Emacs is it's own world.  I don't think it is reasonable to compare
> its command set to anything else.

Fair enough.  Try CTRL-C in a Firefox window and  see that nothing 
happens.  If you want to kill Firefox started from a terminal window, 
CTRL-C in the terminal window is needed (or you can apply the usual exit 
methods--click on the window bar, use the menu, or use a keyboard 
shortcut).  To kill Firefox started from the menu, there is nothing you 
can do with CTRL-C.  An unresponsive Firefox must be killed with xkill or 
the GNOME app-killer.

>
>> (c) Often it seems as though the decisions about what keys to use for what
>> purposes (and many other UI design decisions) are made by the developers
>> with no attention paid to context, history, or relevant standards and
>> guidelines.
>
> Except that many of the decisions predate the history and context
> you expect them to follow.  Most of what we expect these days
> is at least slightly related to IBM's CDE work and motif
> circa 1989 but motif's licensing kept it from being used
> in the early open source work.  I don't think MS Windows
> follows it strictly either.

Also a fair point, but the problems crop up often enough with new software 
as well.  I commend the GNOME folks for trying to standardize the behavior 
of GNOME apps, though I occasionally think they carry the idea too far. 
(It seems they can't win, though.  If they push standards too hard, folks 
bitch about lack of flexibility.  If they don't push hard enough, we get 
threads like this one.  It's a delicate balance, and we will know they've 
achieved it when nobody is entirely happy.)

-- 
 		Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs