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GNOME 3.10 ReleasedGNOME 3.10 ReleasedPosted Sep 26, 2013 6:42 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950)In reply to: GNOME 3.10 Released by rsidd Parent article: GNOME 3.10 Released
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.
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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.
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