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GNOME 3.10 ReleasedGNOME 3.10 ReleasedPosted Sep 26, 2013 4:58 UTC (Thu) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)Parent article: GNOME 3.10 Released It looks like GNOME is planning to remove middle-click-paste, a feature that has made Unix/X culturally superior to Windows/Mac since the beginning of time. They already removed it and reverted it but will remove it for real next time. Gives me one more reason never to consider using GNOME again.
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GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 26, 2013 6:42 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link] This is what one of the designers said about this Slashdot story:
Would be good to mention on LWN that this was reported/claimed by Slashdot.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 26, 2013 6:52 UTC (Thu) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]
On the contrary, it was amply clear that they were "not simply planning on removing middle click paste," but replacing it with some context-menu stuff. Or are you saying middle-click-paste will remain and the story was wrong? (How many laptops come with a middle button anyway? Middle click is generally emulated with left-right click, and used only for pasting, as far as I can see. Why design functions for a button that most machines don't ship with any more?)
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 26, 2013 7:04 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
If you want to believe Slashdot instead of what designers are saying, cool. However, it is rather pointless to argue with me about it. Just copy pasting what they are saying. As said by them various times, they have no idea yet what they want to do.
Anyways, if you think you know what to do, while they have no design yet, please tell them. It will save them some time.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 26, 2013 16:12 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
True. You know you've had a bad year when people are more willing to trust Slashdot more than your designers.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 29, 2013 2:45 UTC (Sun) by efitton (guest, #93063) [Link]
Allan never actually denied that middle click paste was being removed. In fact, no gnome developer has actually refuted the removal of middle click paste (including you). What was said is that the design isn’t finished and now isn’t the time to talk about it. And the way it was phrased is frankly political talk worthy of the evening news. It sounds like a denial but isn’t. I also notice you didn’t link to the gnome developers in the same thread who are worried about the change.
Other reasons to believe middle click paste is going away:
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 29, 2013 12:39 UTC (Sun) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
The idea is to think about something better. Kind of obvious. That some people or GNOME developers are worried is logical. This is with every change. The middle click paste was gone in one gtk+ release, back in the next. I hated the brief period it wasn't working. But I changed the setting in gnome-tweak-tool and before I could ask about it, the setting was reverted.
Just because a few people (usually the same, though sometimes they switch accounts) here suggest that I am always "pro" whatever, it might be good to not assume things are black and white.
And if you're quoting from that thread, why not quote the response where I clearly stated that a lot of people hate the change? Is that also not a bit political to leave this out in your response to me?
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 29, 2013 14:34 UTC (Sun) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]
The question here, to me, is very simple. Why design a new feature around a button that hardly exists on most new machines? On machines that have a middle button, some Linux users use it to paste. On machines (the majority today) that don't have a middle button, most users don't miss it, but a few Linux users either emulate it with simultaneous left-right, or buy an additional three-button mouse. Why not leave them alone?
And yes, this may be seen by some as flamebait, but there is another question I have: has GNOME 3 won significant numbers of new users, as opposed to users who have simply upgraded from GNOME 2 and not jumped ship? (Unity certainly has, due to Ubuntu's popularity on the desktop.)
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 29, 2013 14:47 UTC (Sun) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
> The question here, to me, is very simple. Why design a new feature around a button that hardly exists on most new machines?
I just went to my favorite hardware vendor website.
Every single mouse for sale there had three or more buttons.
(you do know that the mouse wheel is a clickable button, don't you? you can roll up, down, or click)
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 29, 2013 15:34 UTC (Sun) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]
I have news for you.
1. For many years now, laptops have outsold desktops. Today the margin isn't close.
2. Very few laptops come with three-button trackpads.
3. Very few laptop users buy mice to use with their laptops. If they are dissatisfied with the trackpad's accuracy (graphics professionals, for example) they are more likely to buy a Wacom tablet or something.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 29, 2013 15:47 UTC (Sun) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
1. yes
2. yes, more or less: at my home we have four current laptops: a MacBook, an Acer, a Sony, and a HP; the Mac has a gesture (three-finger tap), the Acer has a physical third button/"mouse wheel" (it's actually a five-way clickable joystick thingy), the Sony and the HP both have two pysical buttons, but you can click on both at the same time and get the "third button" effect. 3. actually, at the "shop", where we have some 300 laptops, I haven't ever seen one of them without an external mouse; apparently, politicians can't use the trackpads to save their lives... :-D
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 29, 2013 21:53 UTC (Sun) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
I see a very large percentage of the people who are using laptops using them as a portable desktop, i.e. they take it from one location with a keyboard/mouse/monitor to another similarly equipped.
I also see a lot of the users who use their laptops in other places pull out a 'real' mouse and plug it in.
No, it's not every laptop, but it's a rather large percentage of laptop users.
I also see laptops with the edge of their touchpad configured to act as a scroll wheel, that's a third button.
It's not nearly as uncommon to have a third button as you think.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 29, 2013 22:04 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] I also see laptops with the edge of their touchpad configured to act as a scroll wheel, that's a third button. Are you sure? I've worked with a few such models, and yes, touchpad was able to emulate scroll well (in fact you can pick if you want edge scroll or two-finger scroll), but it was not able to emulate third button. What kind of driver do you need to enable this functionality?
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 29, 2013 22:11 UTC (Sun) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
with at least a couple brands of laptops it didn't require any special driver. The system apparently saw it the same as a mouse wheel on a normal mouse. this wasn't just a matter of 'use the edge' there was actually a ridge separating the 'wheel' portion from the main portion, and tapping on the wheel portion clicked the third button.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 29, 2013 22:31 UTC (Sun) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Any Synaptics touchpad can be configured to emulate middle-click if you click on a special zone.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Oct 1, 2013 19:55 UTC (Tue) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link]
It's a poor but not entirely useless substitute for a real third button. It's unnecessarily hard to push it without also scrolling at the same time, however. Proper mice with three real buttons do exist but they are hard to find.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Oct 1, 2013 21:06 UTC (Tue) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
> It's unnecessarily hard to push it without also scrolling at the same time, however
at the house we have some cheap mice, and not one of us has this complaint... the movements (clicking versus scrolling) are just too different.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Oct 2, 2013 0:00 UTC (Wed) by apoelstra (subscriber, #75205) [Link]
I've had this problem with some mice which have very small scroll increments (typically they make a clicking sound) and which compensate by only sending scroll signals to the PC every 3 or 4 clicks.
With, e.g. the Microsoft white mice I have never had this problem.
It's unfortunately an issue of stupid design rather than build quality, so you can't avoid the problem by just buying expensive mice.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 30, 2013 0:49 UTC (Mon) by efitton (guest, #93063) [Link]
In essence, despite the disparaging comments and implications that the slashdot forum was wrong, GNOME designers are looking at replacing middle click paste with “something better.”
Why obfuscate? Why not just admit that designers are looking at doing just that but will make sure that tweak tool will override and this change to gtk+ won’t impact other environments. I have to imagine there would have been much less brouhaha.
And as this is only my second comment on lwn.net despite having lurked corbet’s excellent writing for a dozen years you might doubt my persona (which shouldn’t actually change the validity of my reasoning *cough*). I would be Eric Fitton the math teacher and owner of efitton.net.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 26, 2013 11:29 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] Why design functions for a button that most machines don't ship with any more? The fact that most laptops don't ship with usable pointing devices means I always use a proper three-button mouse with a laptop. Why suffer when you can fix the problem with a $5 device? Removing middle-click paste, if it happens, would be one of the most bone-headed, productivity-killing changes ever.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 27, 2013 18:21 UTC (Fri) by luya (subscriber, #50741) [Link]
Still available via Tweak Tool. I never knew this functionality existed.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 26, 2013 7:30 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] When we take something from another source, we do try to credit it. But that is not the case here...we watch that list, and I've been aware of this particular issue for the last month. It didn't seem worth a mention here so far, but I am pondering an article on the "when is it the right time to show the design"? topic. But, in any case, Slashdot was not our source here.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 26, 2013 7:49 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
I meant the other poster when saying something about it on LWN. LWN authors are awesome. They usually investigate, ask around, etc.
Regarding this, this change indeed happened a month ago in a development version. Seems they like to play with things in a development release, then try various things. Similar thing happened with Nautilus. However in this case it seems they had no idea yet what they wanted to do just that they wanted to do something. Anyway, that is my impression. Thing was quickly reverted, then since yesterday Slashdot claimed things, while nothing happened since.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 26, 2013 7:42 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
They are removing middle-click?
Finally!
GNOME, everything is forgiven, you are the best desktop EVAH!
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 26, 2013 15:04 UTC (Thu) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]
> Gives me one more reason never to consider using GNOME again.
The "Gnome removed my favorite feature" discussion has been going on for over a decade now. You should just stop using it. That's what I did, and I'm much more favorably disposed toward the project now that I don't use their software.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 26, 2013 15:11 UTC (Thu) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]
I stopped using GNOME2 when Ubuntu switched to Unity. I used Unity and XFCE for a while, these days I use i3. I have never used GNOME3, but the point here is that I have read nothing yet that would tempt me to try it, and plenty that convinces me to stay far away. (plus, anyway, I have become too used to a tiling WM to switch back now.)
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 26, 2013 17:46 UTC (Thu) by Doogie (guest, #59626) [Link] Well I stopped using Gnome before it was cool. Also I don't even own a TV and my bike is a fixie.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 26, 2013 20:12 UTC (Thu) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]
> Also I don't even own a TV and my bike is a fixie.
I don't own a TV or a bike. This isn't due to poverty, but rather a pervasive lack of time.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 26, 2013 20:09 UTC (Thu) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]
Actually, what I said isn't entirely true, since I use Cinnamon on one of my systems, and that uses quite a lot of Gnome 3 below the UI.
I also used Xfce for a while, but LXPanel has improved to the point where I prefer LXDE. It does about the same thing with less code.
Regarding tiling window managers: I've never heard anyone say "I've used overlapping windows for so long that I can't go back to tiling." It's always the other way round, so there must be something to it. I haven't used a tiling WM long enough to "see the light," so this is just conjecture on my part.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 26, 2013 21:36 UTC (Thu) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
There's something to be said for having your window manager actually manage your windows for you and not having to manually poke around to get things aligned and still taking up maximum space. Aero Snap, the gridding plugins on OS X, and similar features in KWin and Shell (at least the maximize-on-drag-to-top) are quite popular and these are basically just tiling features triggered by the user instead of being pervasive.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 27, 2013 0:53 UTC (Fri) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]
I used to like Unity+Compiz's eyecandy but switched away because it was causing lockups on my rather old, nvidia-powered desktop. Tiling WMs are for people who want to live away from the mouse as much as possible -- and who think, in particular, that dragging window borders with a mouse is not fun. And a side benefit is it maximises your screen real estate. And it's lightweight -- much lighter than even XFCE. On an old machine, the speed difference is striking.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 26, 2013 15:24 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] I'm much more favorably disposed toward the project now that I don't use their software. LoL. Unfortunately, however, my kids still use GNOME so I'm stuck helping them through the brokenness. I think the next upgrade to our home machines might finally push them over to XFCE.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 26, 2013 18:41 UTC (Thu) by hadrons123 (guest, #72126) [Link]
I am using either mate/XFCE. I test the Fedora gnome new version for a while but then I find it repulsive after a short usage and I have to run back to MATE/XFCE.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 26, 2013 15:27 UTC (Thu) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
> a feature that has made Unix/X culturally superior to Windows/Mac since the beginning of time
Woah man, just woah.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 26, 2013 17:38 UTC (Thu) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
This is a feature that deserve a well-visible setting. Some people can't stand it ("one of the most bone-headed, productivity-killing changes ever") and other people (like me) thinks it's so good that they install middle-click pasting tweaks in Windows and OSX.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 26, 2013 17:48 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] I think I was quoted saying "one of the most bone-headed, productivity-killing changes ever" but you seem to have misunderstood. I love middle-click paste and I was referring to its possible removal as bone-headed.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 26, 2013 18:10 UTC (Thu) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
I stand corrected!
But someone else in this same thread can be quoted as saying...
QUOTE
(obviously Cyberax could be ironic too...)
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 26, 2013 19:23 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Actually, no. I hate middle-paste (and the lack of standard copy&paste keys) with a passion.
Why has it ever been invented?
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 26, 2013 19:36 UTC (Thu) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
Because it's simple, and fast. Select, middle-click. Copy-paste is, for some workloads, a frequent operation, so, Huffman encoding: smallest possible sequence for a frequent output.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 26, 2013 19:50 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
No, it's not. And it always confuses users.
For example, you select a text and try to middle-paste it into the address bar of Firefox. Except that when you click on the address bar it replaces your selection. Nice.
And then there's the constant problem of keeping track whether you've copied the selected text or not.
An absolutely total mis-feature that should have been strangled in the crib.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 26, 2013 20:17 UTC (Thu) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]
> No, it's not. And it always confuses users.
It doesn't seem to confuse me.
On the other hand, I find a touchpad with gestures and tapping enabled to be dibilitating. Windows open faster than I can close them. The first thing I do on a new install is run synclient and disabled as much of it as I can. But middle copy and paste, I'm fine with that.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 26, 2013 20:18 UTC (Thu) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
> For example, you select a text and try to middle-paste it into the address bar of Firefox. Except that when you click on the address bar it replaces your selection. Nice.
?!
If you Middle-click, it just appends (or inserts, depending on where you middle-click) the selection in the point where you middle-clicked.
It's not select - click - middleclick; it's just select - middleclick.
> And then there's the constant problem of keeping track whether you've copied the selected text or not.
I don't get it. If you selected, then you "copied". If you middleclicked, then you "pasted"...
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 27, 2013 20:35 UTC (Fri) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link]
> If you Middle-click, it just appends (or inserts, depending on where you middle-click) the selection in the point where you middle-clicked.
Which is useless. I want to replace the address with the contents of the PRIMARY selection. Inserting a new URL in the middle of an old one is *never* what I want to d.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 27, 2013 22:37 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
speak for yourself, I frequently need to paste in URLs in multiple steps when people send me links that are extremely long and so get broken across lines.
admittedly, this is mostly a case of appending to the URL rather than inserting in the middle, but I've had reasons to do that as well.
a paste should either insert the text whereever the cursor currently is (my preference) or insert it where the pointer is (fallback), it should never blindly replace everything with a new thing if you didn't tell it ot
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 28, 2013 17:33 UTC (Sat) by james (subscriber, #1325) [Link] Have you tried pasting the entire broken URL into the address bar, line-breaks and all? Most GUI browsers will (attempt to) DTRT and remove the line-breaks for you.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 29, 2013 0:19 UTC (Sun) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
Yes, sometimes it works, sometimes not.
all too frequently, the URL now has spaces (or quote characters) added at the beginning of each line that will prevent the broawser from DTRT
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Oct 2, 2013 7:58 UTC (Wed) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]
KDE apps feature this x icon at the end of every text input which does exactly that - a middle click on it will empty the field and replace its contents with what was in the buffer while a click somewhere in the field will insert. Firefox (and every other app/platform lacking this) is to blame for not having this totally simple and obvious feature... reminds me of how session management was badly implemented and then blamed for not working, thus removed. Ignorance is bliss...
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 26, 2013 20:43 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] For example, you select a text and try to middle-paste it into the address bar of Firefox. Except that when you click on the address bar it replaces your selection. Works fine here (just checked again, but then I'm using this ability daily thus it's hard for me to imagine that it'll not work). What am I doing “wrong”? And then there's the constant problem of keeping track whether you've copied the selected text or not. Well, it'll be a problem with any copy-paste technique since clipboard is not actually displayed anywhere. There are few features which are done wrong in Linux UI, but middle click is one of the things which are so brilliant that I don't want to ever lose (in fact that's one of the reasons to pick ThinkPads over other laptops: these beasts actually have a middle button and it's placed in the right place — that is, above touchpad).
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 27, 2013 10:18 UTC (Fri) by alankila (subscriber, #47141) [Link]
It's just that when the address bar already has text, your click may be mistaken as a selection if the pointing device simultaneously moves slightly. It's easy to lose the selections. The ease of accidentally overriding the selection seems like a fundamental limitation of the select+middleclick technique.
What really kills me that on Linux, ctrl-C has dual purpose, the other usage is to send INT to process, and the other is to perform a copy operation. What it means in particular is that terminals tend to copy by ctrl+shift+c, while all other applications copy by ctrl+c (and don't respond to ctrl+shift+c). This prevents efficient memorization and penalizes mistakes: using the wrong keystroke in the application leads to incorrect action being taken. On OS X, they have a separate "cmd" key which is used to do copy and paste, and which leaves ctrl free to do its traditional function.
I guess the only solution to fixing *nix copy/paste is to stop using terminal emulators, forever.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 27, 2013 10:27 UTC (Fri) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
> I guess the only solution to fixing *nix copy/paste is to stop using terminal emulators, forever.
Or using the Mac global shortcut mappings...
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 27, 2013 12:14 UTC (Fri) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] Blame the PC keyboard. The Sun 3 keyboard had »copy« and »paste« keys.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 27, 2013 13:11 UTC (Fri) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]
> It's just that when the address bar already has text, your click may be mistaken as a selection if the pointing device simultaneously moves slightly. It's easy to lose the selections. The ease of accidentally overriding the selection seems like a fundamental limitation of the select+middleclick technique.
This is why Linux native browsers, like Konqueror, include a "Clear address bar" button. You can get extensions for Firefox for this sort of thing, too. I find it useful enough to use this feature even when not middle clicking.
In FF it's not really required anyway: Middle click in any part of the page will attempt to navigate to the text you last selected, if it looks like a URL. Address bar is not needed.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 27, 2013 14:11 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] It's just that when the address bar already has text, your click may be mistaken as a selection if the pointing device simultaneously moves slightly. “Slightly”? You must move it all the way out of address bar! If you try move you pointer with middle button clicked it'll be just ignored (mouse cursor is frozen when that happens). Just middle-click again — and you are golden! The ease of accidentally overriding the selection seems like a fundamental limitation of the select+middleclick technique. All such problems in my experience come from keyboards/mices which don't have a middle button and where you can accidentally generate left click or right click instead of middle click. What really kills me that on Linux, ctrl-C has dual purpose, the other usage is to send INT to process, and the other is to perform a copy operation. Yup. And that is why I use trackpoint in combination with middle click. Works fine in most cases (except crazy Java programs, but they are not Linux programs, they tend to try to invent their own way of doing everything anyway).
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 27, 2013 15:57 UTC (Fri) by apoelstra (subscriber, #75205) [Link]
<blockquote>“Slightly”? You must move it all the way out of address bar! If you try move you pointer with middle button clicked it'll be just ignored (mouse cursor is frozen when that happens). Just middle-click again — and you are golden!</blockquote>
The problem is not accidentally selecting while middle-clicking, but accidentally selecting while clicking normally. For example, you might click the address bar, hold down backspace to clear it (itself very irritating, as the more natural "triple-click and hit delete" idiom will also blow out your copy/paste buffer), then middle-click in the blank address bar.
I think, this is why Firefox treats middle-clicking in the middle of the page as a "go to URL" signal. IMHO this convenience is not really worth the suprise of Firefox jumping pages every time you miss a text box. (Pentadactyl and vimperator users can just hit 'p' or 'P' to the same effect, which is harder to do by accident.)
A more common problem, for me anyway, is that I have a habit of (a) selecting text while reading long pages as a way of bookmarking my position while scrolling or checking other windows, and (b) selecting text to delete/overwrite it. It is frustrating that both these activities lose data from the paste buffer, especially when trying to overwrite text from the clipboard.
I love middle-click-to-copy, but it could certainly be improved. Maybe if you had to use the right mouse button while dragging to copy text, that would avoid these conflicts and also prevent users who are unaware of it from accidentally using it.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Oct 2, 2013 12:40 UTC (Wed) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link]
"The problem is not accidentally selecting while middle-clicking, but accidentally selecting while clicking normally. For example, you might click the address bar, hold down backspace to clear it (itself very irritating, as the more natural "triple-click and hit delete" idiom will also blow out your copy/paste buffer), then middle-click in the blank address bar."
You are attempting to use this like a two-step copy paste and it just isnt. So forget about your copy/paste buffer, that isnt even involved in the yank. You have to clear the space before you start, since there is one step, not two, it is not possible to insert a step between the steps, when there is only one step.
"A more common problem, for me anyway, is that I have a habit of (a) selecting text while reading long pages as a way of bookmarking my position while scrolling or checking other windows, and (b) selecting text to delete/overwrite it. It is frustrating that both these activities lose data from the paste buffer, especially when trying to overwrite text from the clipboard."
But they dont. The paste buffer is unaffected. You access it with shift-insert or ctrl-v or meta-v or whatever you have that mapped to - the middle shift yank uses the primary selection, NOT the paste buffer!
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Oct 1, 2013 20:08 UTC (Tue) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link]
You can only use ctrl-c to copy on a *nix system if you have installed some sort of windows keybindings. I cant completely call for the destruction of such keybindings (I get forced to spend way too much time in windows and therefore use them myself) but please dont mistakenly think they are somehow native keybindings.
Also you wont over-ride the selection unless you click the wrong button. Move the mouse, then middle click, without left clicking, and you should have no difficulty. Unless your mouse, like most, doesnt have a real middle button and instead you are trying to press on the scrollwheel. Which often winds up with the wheel spinning and your finger colliding with the wrong button.
THAT is what often happens with me, and aside from being more careful the only solution is to hunt really hard until you find a decent mouse.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Oct 2, 2013 3:10 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
I tend to buy cheap ($5 or so) mice and haven't had any problems like you are describing. your mileage will vary, so I'm not disputing that you are having problems, but I'm surprised it's a lot of hunting
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Oct 2, 2013 13:43 UTC (Wed) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link]
Well at the moment I have two working mice (I tend to be hard on them) - one is an el cheapo not sure where I got it, the other is a moderately expensive Pixxo gaming mouse I ordered and had shipped - neither one has a satisfactory middle button, but either one will work if I am slow and careful with it. Just not conducive to fast workflow, which is where the middle click should shine.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 27, 2013 20:33 UTC (Fri) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link]
Don't forget the programs who confuse the two operations so that sometimes selecting text overwrites the CLIPBOARD as well as the PRIMARY selection. XChat, I'm looking at you. And I think Mozilla historically did this as well. No wonder the users are confused--even developers can't always get it right!
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 27, 2013 13:34 UTC (Fri) by ebassi (subscriber, #54855) [Link] Why has it ever been invented? it was an easter egg, back in the time when the ICCCM mandated a PRIMARY and a SECONDARY selection, and everyone was implementing copy and paste on X11 as they wanted, mostly by copying random behaviours from random applications, and no two applications behaved consistently. these days, with a proper specification, and with SECONDARY gone, the only vestigial role PRIMARY has is to confuse newcomers and convince them that copy and paste in X11/Linux is broken, compared to other, more successful platforms. well, that and provide a sense of smug, hipsterish superiority for neckbeards who discovered this easter egg twenty years ago, and that can now scream bloody murder as soon as toolkit developers start questioning why are we still carrying baggage of crappy workarounds to broken applications — or, as Slashdot and Hacker News call them: their audience.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 27, 2013 13:41 UTC (Fri) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]
That's not fair. It serves a valuable purpose, of impressing Windows/Mac users: "Hey, how did you do that?" (on seeing me copy-paste from mouse, hand never venturing near keyboard.) Why use Linux if not to impress people?
(ot -- people are also impressed with my text formatting on emacs. People are easily impressed.)
The point someone else brought up, of ^C meaning something else on Unix, is valid too.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 27, 2013 13:45 UTC (Fri) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] Wow. This is a direct attack on people who have been using a particular mode of interaction for a long time (it predates ICCCM, BTW) and who are understandably upset when a successful work pattern gets broken. Why try to understand why your users are unhappy when you can call them "smug hipsterish neckbeards" and ignore what they are trying to tell you?
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 27, 2013 13:59 UTC (Fri) by ebassi (subscriber, #54855) [Link] can call them "smug hipsterish neckbeards" and ignore what they are trying to tell you when I read tripe and hyperbole like: "a feature that has made Unix/X culturally superior to Windows/Mac since the beginning of time", my only reaction is to use "smug hipsterish neckbeards" as a retort. it's either that, or a whoopie cushion sound. "culturally superior" is just code for the elitist "fuck you, got mine" attitude; it's easy to dismiss these people out of hand, because it's exactly the same attitude that says that every other OS is wrong, and every other user who gets confused by features that lead to destructive patterns "were not smart enough" for Linux. it's the usual "exclusive club" claptrap that I've been dealing with since I started using Linux 15 years ago - and that makes companies like Google and Canonical dissociate their products from the Linux brand as fast as they can possibly run. as for everyone else using "middle click to paste", I don't particularly care; it's an easter egg, and if I ever have to vote whether or not it should stay in GTK+ (yes, it's implemented by the toolkits, these days) then I'll probably abstain. I'd absolutely vote yes to disabling it by default, because not easter egg is worth people pasting wrong links in bug reports, disclosing private information on websites, or in general losing data.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 27, 2013 14:40 UTC (Fri) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] when I read tripe and hyperbole like: "a feature that has made Unix/X culturally superior to Windows/Mac since the beginning of time"As the one who wrote that: *whoosh* Yes, I believe Unix-like is better, for this and other reasons. No, I don't believe time started in the 1980s. And I used Windows (3.1) before I used Linux (kernel 1.2.3, I think).
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 27, 2013 14:47 UTC (Fri) by ebassi (subscriber, #54855) [Link] As the one who wrote that: *whoosh* you may have written it in a purposefully hyperbolic manner; I have read and heard people that say that with a straight face, and I've have done so for the past month and a half, when this whole affair was blown off the rails after the commit the reverted the "off by default" setting was pushed to Git.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 27, 2013 14:50 UTC (Fri) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
The problem is not you just going
> smug hipsterish neckbeards
(which I might just as well be, I don't know)
But when you call a feature an "easter egg" (middle-click and multiple selections are useful for people that cut and paste a lot of text), you are just being specious.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 29, 2013 14:38 UTC (Sun) by ebassi (subscriber, #54855) [Link] I'm really not being "specious": middle click to paste the PRIMARY selection is an Easter egg for "experienced users" (whatever that may mean, or whoever those may be), as the X11 clipboard specification puts it. I suggest looking at the various discussions that led to the specification being formalised.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 29, 2013 14:57 UTC (Sun) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
>> specious. (adj.) 1. apparently good or right though lacking real merit; superficially pleasing or plausible: specious arguments.
The clipboard specification you linked is not X11's, but Freedesktop.org's... which was discussed and formalized more or less twenty to thirty years after ICCCM was discussed and formalized. So, yes, you were not being specious: you were plagiarizing someone being specious... :)
As I wrote in another post, when I was introduced to mice in the 1980s, that's what was said to me: "this button selects, this pastes, and this opens a context-sensitive menu". This is the simplest possible way to use a mouse, especially if you copy and paste a lot of text in your workflow.
Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V came many years after.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 29, 2013 18:26 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Quite. Things are not "easter eggs" if they are used by the overwhelming majority of users of that environment, and widely documented. Middle-click to paste is *not* an easter egg. Heck, it was the first thing I ever learned about X, before I even learned how to start an xterm!
It's culturally transmitted knowledge, sure. So is the do { ... } while(0) pattern for statement-like macros in C. Maybe we should remove that too?
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 28, 2013 1:36 UTC (Sat) by torquay (guest, #92428) [Link] There might be a middle ground here (no pun intended). In my experience I've found the middle-click-to-paste to be a mixture of useful and annoying at the same time. It some contexts it's good as a paste shortcut, and in other contexts it has inconsistent and/or imprecise behavior. In terminals it only pastes at the current cursor position, while in GUI-based editors/wordprocessors it generally pastes where the mouse points. In the former case it's clear where the text is going to end up. In the latter case I often get the position wrong: +-1 character (to left/right) and less often +-1 line; this necessitates an undo operation, where I then either try again with middle-click-to-paste, or manually move the cursor and use control-V to paste. The above issue has obviously negated all the time savings of using the middle-click-to-paste, in contrast to an explicit copy'n'paste operation via Control-c and Control-v. It also brings up another bug/misfeature: the selection on the screen is often not what's in the clipboard, causing Control-v to paste something other than I intended. (This is the "two clipboards problem", for which there are workarounds. Why not just have one clipboard by default ?) There are also other issues with middle-click-to-paste, such as the default behavior in Firefox: an accidental middle-click-to-paste in the middle of page is highly confusing to users. "Why did the browser just go to different page? Linux seems broken!". Here accidental means either imprecise positioning, or simply pressing the middle button instead of the left or right one (people have fat fingers or aren't paying attention - their simple mistakes should not have drastic effects). Simply removing or disabling middle-click-to-paste is not the best solution. Firstly, we need to take into account that a large portion of the existing user base used to the current behavior. Secondly, there are cases where middle-click-to-paste is both useful and precise. The proposed middle ground solution is as follows. Whenever middle-click-to-paste is used within a GUI-based editor or wordprocessor, the cursor is first moved to where the mouse is pointing (so the user can clearly see where the action is going to take place) and a small context menu pops up asking "Paste [first few letters of selection]... here?". A second middle-click is used to confirm the action, and any other click (or pressing escape) cancels the action. For terminals, the current behavior can stay as is, since it's not ambiguous and/or imprecise. I've saved a lot of time that way. For software such as Firefox, the action of middle-click-to-paste within the page should be either disabled by default, or a context menu is used to ask the user if they really want to navigate to page xyz. The behavior of doing middle-click-to-paste within the URL dialog would follow the dialog used for editors outlined above.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 28, 2013 3:52 UTC (Sat) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
> an accidental middle-click-to-paste in the middle of page is highly confusing to users.
I agree, especially when combined with the middle click on a URL opens a new tab instead of a new window. managing to miss the URL takes you off to some other page (or an error, depending on what's in the clipboard)
this is always one of the first things I disable on firefox, unfortunantly it's only possible through the about:config interface (search for middle and then change middlemouse.contentLoadURL to false)
But this is just a case of one application (firefox) doing silly things.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Oct 1, 2013 14:51 UTC (Tue) by jubal (subscriber, #67202) [Link]
DO dig deeper, mr Bassi.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 26, 2013 22:43 UTC (Thu) by mcatanzaro (guest, #93033) [Link]
I (could be wrong but) highly doubt it will be removed. It cannot remain a default because it's unintuitive and initially confusing, and GNOME is strongly focused on simplicity and new users. But the designers are well aware that failure to provide the classic behavior (my guess: probably through a toggle in Tweak Tool) would disappoint tons of users.
Which is not to say that GNOME doesn't have a feature-removal problem; I just don't think middle-click paste specifically is going to wind up a victim of it. My guess is that you'll discover another actually-removed feature to actually miss.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 27, 2013 1:20 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
middle click to paste is at least as intuitive as knowing that you have to move the mouse to the top left corner, or that the menus at the top of the screen change depending on which window you last clicked on
those things are only 'simple' if you expect them.
and middle-click-paste at least as discoverable as any of those things (and trivial to have the menu item for paste say that middle click will do it as well if you are really worried.
I would also say it's less confusing initially as well, at least it is unless you have been trained by something else to think that middle click does something different (the firefox behaviour of trying to go to the 'url' if you middle click anywhere in a window that's not a text entry box is a good example of surprising behaviour.
right-click-paste as done by putty is a good example of surprising behaviour, because right click is used for lots of other things normally.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 27, 2013 16:45 UTC (Fri) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
> those things are only 'simple' if you expect them.
QUOTE
Hi, this is a mouse. It has three buttons:
The Select button, the Paste button, and the Menu button.
ENDQUOTE
This is how the mouse was introduced to me in the late 1980s. I don't know how can it be made any simpler than that.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 30, 2013 18:52 UTC (Mon) by jwakely (subscriber, #60262) [Link]
[Having just used select-and-middle-click to select this text to quote...]
> right-click-paste as done by putty is a good example of surprising behaviour, because right click is used for lots of other things normally.
The very first thing I do when installing putty is change the settings to paste with middle-click!
Easter egg my ***.
shift-Insert pastes too Posted Oct 4, 2013 11:11 UTC (Fri) by sdalley (subscriber, #18550) [Link]
> and middle-click-paste at least as discoverable as any of those things
> (and trivial to have the menu item for paste say that middle click will do > it as well if you are really worried.
And let's not forget that paste can also be done with shift-Insert
This also avoids use of the mouse, of course.
GNOME 3.10 Released Posted Sep 27, 2013 3:03 UTC (Fri) by Neowin (guest, #93001) [Link]
Terminal cannot remain a default because it's unintuitive and initially confusing, and GNOME is strongly focused on simplicity and new users.
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