Cut, Copy, Paste Nightmare

[Craig White]

On Sat, 2006-06-03 at 20:46 +0800, Ed Greshko wrote:
> Matthew Saltzman wrote:
> > On Sat, 3 Jun 2006, Ed Greshko wrote:
> > 
> >> Matthew Saltzman wrote:
> >>
> >> Speaking of context, Ctrl-C has had meaning in the context of a hardware
> >> terminal that predates any windows based system.  I was never big on DOS
> >> as my experience was with terminals connected to mainframe systems.
> >> However, I don't recall that DOS had a concept of Ctrl-C being a "copy"
> >> operation.  So, maybe we have to back determine who thought Ctrl-C was a
> >> good idea to start out?
> > 
> > I don't know for sure who was "first" to use CTRL-C for copy, but it's
> > been common (though not universal) in GUI apps on Windows since its
> > inception--certainly MS GUI apps such as Word.  CTRL-C in DOS also
> > killed the running program in text mode, but may not have done in
> > full-screen apps.
> > 
> > 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.
> 
> Right, common...not universal.  Humm...emacs uses CTRL-X combined with
> other control characters to mean something.  Yet, Ctrl-X means "cut" in
> other contexts.  So, is emacs doing something "wrong" or can one deal
> with when running in the context of emacs?
> > 
> >>
> >> Whoever imagines "Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V" is universally implemented in the MS
> >> world apparently has used a limited number of applications in that
> >> world. (I suppose that should be applauded.)  One well known terminal
> >> emulation program uses "Ctrl-Insert/Shift-Insert" for copy/paste
> >> operations.
> >>
----
I remember this on a Macintosh pre-dating Windows and any Microsoft
acceptance of this.

It was the 'Apple' modifier and the bottom row, left to right...
Z = Undo
X = Cut
C = Copy
V = Paste

'twas always thus but Apple had some power to make it stick because of
the single menu design and the Apple Uniform Interface Guidelines
published very early on. Microsoft saw the wisdom of this and has
implemented it across their applications. GUI applications tend to
leverage this to provide for user familiarity.

Obviously an application such as emacs which has roots which never
anticipated a GUI interface doesn't conform to this familiarity.

Craig