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GNOME 3.10 ReleasedGNOME 3.10 ReleasedPosted Sep 26, 2013 17:48 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)In reply to: GNOME 3.10 Released by hummassa Parent article: GNOME 3.10 Released
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.
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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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