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Posted by willm 7 hours ago

Ghost Cut – or why Cut and Paste is broken everywhere(ishmael.textualize.io)
93 points | 62 commentspage 2
theowaway 1 hour ago|
why is this not an article abour the abomination of paste with formatting
delecti 3 hours ago||
This is an interesting perspective I had never really thought about, and I like the proposed new action, but I don't really want it in lieu of how cut/paste currently works.

In my mental model (which is also how OSs work, though not necessarily how things ought work), the clipboard exists at the OS level, and undo/redo act on the application level. I don't find it to be unexpected or undesirable that doing Ctrl+X,V,Z,Z results in the application returning to its original state but the clipboard ending up being modified.

All that said, I appreciate that this interrogated my mental model a bit.

frenzcan 4 hours ago||
I think I have permanently broken my mental model of the clipboard. I’m always alternating between Linux, Mac and Windows and muscle memory invariably causes me to do the wrong key combo for the OS/app I’m using. Throw in clipboard sync/history tools etc which aren’t always reliable, I regularly paste and either nothing happens or it’s a previous copy of something. It sounds like a small thing but it’s maddening and mostly my own fault.
overgard 2 hours ago||
I really like this, but I think I'd be confused if I saw this without context -- the current behavior is so ingrained in me that any deviation would kind of be a wtf. Not unrecoverable but I think it's hard to change something so widespread.
rickydroll 3 hours ago||
Cut and paste is a UI failure; it only works kinda if you have fully functional hands. If your hands don't work right, or you have tremors or other mobility impairments, your chances of succeeding with cut and paste drop off significantly.

The Emacs mark-and-point UI works for everyone: fully functional hands, partially functioning hands, or even speech recognition. It also solves the problem of copy, cut, and paste described in the article.

rpdillon 3 hours ago|
Reading through the post, it was clear that the author wasn't very familiar with Emacs. I'm a huge fan of the undo model of Emacs, especially with tools like undo-tree (although cycling through with M-y is basically as good for my use cases). The "replace the clipboard" bug doesn't exist because Emacs has a killring (I'm such a fan I bought killring.org years ago!), and the "text reflows" problem is completely solved use C-u C-space to traverse the mark-ring. His final point, that it is multiple operations, I simply disagree is a bug...multiple operations is fine, because I can compose them in a way that suits my workflow. Of course, in Emacs it would be trivial to write Ghost Cut (though it would only work within Emacs...).
aykutulis 3 hours ago||
Most of the time I use "cmd + x" to delete the whole line during coding. So ghost cut conflicts with my habit. I don't think it is a good habit but it is what I got used to. I've also seen people with the same habit. So it might be a good time to change my habit
Cockbrand 2 hours ago||
The Finder has an interesting take on this: copy a file with ⌘C, then move it somewhere with ⌥⌘V. This is much nicer than the Windows Explorer's CTRL+X and CTRL+V, where the user is unsure what happens when they never paste the file.
Cyberdog 1 hour ago|
What does happen if you never paste the file?

It feels to me like cut/copy (in the clipboard manipulation sense)/paste are nonsensical operations on files in the first place.

bighead1 4 hours ago||
want to thank the author of that post for giving me the opportunity to be thankful that I get to live my life without ever having to deal with the consequences of their opinions.

imagine having that guy as your roommate!

giancarlostoro 1 hour ago||
Copy and Paste too, and its because if you hit Ctrl + C (copy) by mistake, when you actually meant to hit CTRL+V did you know, that Teams, Discord, etc will copy a completely empty text-input box AND WIPE YOUR PASTE HISTORY WITH IT?

This is why copy and paste is broken for so many years, because devs at these beautiful companies, decided to let you wipe your end-user's clipboard when chatInputText.length === 0 or whatever. I noticed people having consistent issues with copy and paste when Teams became more prevalent, and it made no sense, until I realized.

If you work for one of these chat companies, for the love of GOD make an internal ticket, this is embarrassing.

aarvin_roshin 5 hours ago|
This reminds me of File Explorer's cut behavior. It's a nice idea but the layout shift on paste is disorienting.
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