I was just reading this thread… https://sh.itjust.works/post/23476261
…and it got me thinking about something that I’ve wanted for a long time. Why is it that keyboards have not evolved to have dedicated copy/paste keys left of the main board? I’d love to see an additional column of keys left of Esc->Ctrl configurable as macros at least. I do a lot of copy/paste for work. The current shortcuts arent terrible or anything but they’re not exactly comfortable. I’d rather move my whole hand to the left for a macro key than contort to hit the current shortcut.
What do you think?
(Adapted from XKCD)
There are 5 zillion hotkeys.
“5 zillion hotkeys? Ridiculous! We should add dedicated buttons for common operations.”
There are now 5 zillion hotkeys and “media buttons” nobody uses.
…
Seriously though, a lot of old keyboards in ye olde computers had dedicated buttons for a lot of things, but then people figured out software defined, remappable key commands are actually pretty neat. You don’t need a dedicated “Help” key if it’s usually mapped to F1. Moving back to dedicated keys is, ummm, sometimes unwarranted?
Got myself a cheap Chinese programmable foot switch with three switches that enables me to do exactly that without fucking up my normal layout. And it can be switched to other things depending on the application as well. Very useful.
I wish there was a dedicated hotkey combo that worked across all applications for paste plain text
Powertoys has a “paste as plain text” module that will allow the same keyboard shortcut across all of Windows
on linux debian, it’s ctrl+shift+v
Same on windows. Works in most applications except some Microsoft Office apps (like Excel and Word) that have a separate “past as text” option.
On mac it’s cmd-shift-v
Thanks, it seems the support for it has improved since I previously gave up on it.
I guarantee I can hit ctrl-c faster than I can move my hand to a different part of the keyboard.
If you’re using Linux, you can do this easily with custom key bindings.
is Ctrl c and Ctrl v too hard for OP? it’s damn near universal with no extra effort to setup…
Yes, it’s weird, but maybe he does a lot. For example, I use the superkey+space to change the keyboard layout about five times per minute, but I changed it to use the Caps Lock key to change the keyboard layout instead.
point is, this already exists, no reason to add special keys when there are already work arounds for people that want it different.
Doesn’t work in Linux consoles.
nearly every console requires including SHIFT if it doesn’t work like normal, even truenas shell. add that to your toolkit, will be good.
CTRL + SHIFT + V also gives you paste options and paste without formatting, so it’s already superior.
AutoHotKey on Windows is very good also.
On linux middle mouse is traditionally paste, with just selecting text being copy.
This is one of the greatest features ever. I constantly use it. I always get screwed up if I end up on a windows system and select text and wonder why I can’t paste it with a click.
My Cloud9 ErgoFS has dedicated keys for that. But, my fingers have known Ctrl+c/v for my entire life, plus they’re more easily reachable, so I still do that.
My only problem is Linux at home and Mac at work with the same keyboard so I tend to accidentally hit super+c in Linux because that’s the cmd key on Mac
CTRL-C / CTRL-V too much? ;)
It’s a bit awkward to do a basic action
Is this a joke? It’s so easy. What would be better?
Not everyone has the same hands.
Well sure, some people have no hands and need a completely different way to input keys. But I figure we weren’t talking about the exception, and you didn’t actually answer the follow-up question.
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You really brought a lot to the conversation
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Not exactly. Its just awkward for a bunch of repetitions, especially on MacOS keyboards. CMD+C/V is even worse on those.
Personally since I use touch typing being able to hit ctrl-c,v without looking works best for me. Anything else would require me to shift my hands too far away from the “home row” and slow me down.
I use touch typing
As opposed to taste typing??
Some people never learned touch typing.
Never heard it called touch typing before… Always just “typing”
Before millennials, touch typing was a specialized skill on your resume, since “typing” would include hunt and peck, which itself is still fairly common among earlier generations.
I’m a millennial and I learned touch typing on a typewriter in school, specifically for my resume.
Wow, that did not feel great to say.
You can just move the modifier keys around. I have Caps Lock as Ctrl and Ctrl as CMD.
I also have Caps Lock als Ctrl, but I leave Cmd where it is by default, and I just disable the Ctrl key.
I use caps lock a lot for stuff, so that probably wouldn’t work well for me, but I’m glad you found a solution that works for you
Honestly I LOVE being able to have Ctrl and Cmd be different modifiers.
Ctrl-C is break, Cmd-C is copy. And so on. All the Unixy stuff respects Ctrl and ignores Cmd and vice versa for the Mac stuff. Honestly it’s the best keyboard setup I have experienced and the only one which never manages to irritate me.
(Personally I am fine without a dedicated copy/paste key; the only ones I like having dedicated keys for are things like volume up/down for which I’m not aware of a universally understood key combination for)
MY PEOPLE! I’m so used to the CMD key that I made this shitty AutoHotkey script that makes things mostly work the same in Windows. It’s glitchy and imperfect, but it’s better than changing my muscle memory.
If anyone has any recommendations to improve the situation (besides recommending that I switch OSes), then I’m all ears.
Here here. Whenever I work on a Linux machine, I really miss having a separate command button for all of the commandline stuff. I keep missing it and have ti remember to hit Ctrl instead.
I kind of agree with all this, except I find it super annoying switching between OSes and always having to recalibrate to command/control being the standard modifier.
Your first mistake is using apple products
Can’t help it when your job supplies it to you.
I’ve got Graphene on my phone and Fedora on my desktop.
MacOS keyboards
On Windows, it was always farthest left button + C.
Mac, it’s the Apple button + C.
Ive changed that because I hate it. You can change your hotkeys to fit your needs, as well as create macros that trigger events.
The Control key is just badly placed on present-day PC keyboards. I swap Caps Lock and Control.
Having grown up on chiclet Mac keyboards, you should try a mechanical keyboard. It’s such a much better experience
I find cmd c so much easier that ctrl c. I can hit it with just my thumb. cmd V is basically the same as ctrl C/V
With 35 years of computer experience I can say that anything except Ctrl+Insert/Shift+Insert is worse.
By that I mean, we all need to adjust our brain to be fluent on which ever ecosystem we are currently logged on to, and become native users of key combos on all we use. I have used MacOS daily since 2004, and linux, Windows and DOS all longer than that. It takes practice, a lot of practice, but in the end I don’t even realize I sometimes use Ctrl+c, other times Cmd+c, and yet again Ctrl+Shift+c. It all comes naturally, by some miracle my brain knows which one to use. Granted, the DOS one I use so rarely these days I need a double take on the Ctrl+Insert. Last time was still around 6 hours ago today.
I guess what I’m saying is keep doing it, you’ll get there.
To paste in Linux:
Ctrl + shift + vin terminal.Ctrl + uin nano but nano doesn’t use the same copy buffer but you can also useCtrl + shift + vbut only to paste something copied from outside nano.To paste in vi(m)
:?!&///<¥₱!Pretty much everywhere else, eg file manager, any GUI, browsers, etc. is
Ctrl +vI also just love that it is beyond simple to create any key combo shortcut for absolutely anything on Linux.
Make that menu key work for the real estate it occupies.
Some terminals use weird combinations like Shift + Insert, which is ridiculous, because it requires me to take my right hand off the mouse to hit the insert key
Right???
I think we should have MORE combination buttons! Typing should be like playing the piano imo
Even if we just had one more, it’d open up a huge new range of possibilities. Ctrl, Shift, Alt and now Var (or whatever)
As well as the 26 new Var + _ combinations you’d be able to have:
- Shift + Var + _
- Ctrl + Var + _
- Alt + Var + _
- Shift + Ctrl + Var + _
- Shift + Alt + Var + _
- Alt + Ctrl + Var + _
- Shift + Ctrl + Alt + Var + _
Hundreds of new shortcuts! As long as you could remember them of course :-)
I tried binding them to my MMO mouse keys once, and immediately removed them when I imagined how easy it would be to accidentally copy and paste something unwanted into a PowerPoint presentation. WFH and all that, you know. It’s good that it takes a tiny bit of intention.
I accidentally pasted a nsfw link in a Teams reply to my boss. I didn’t send it, but that was a closer-call than I’m comfortable with.
I mainly used irssi via ssh to connect to IRC back in the day. And one side effect of right clicking in the putty window is that it automatically pastes. And if whatever you paste contains a newline, it gets submitted to whatever channel or person you have focused.
Seems like it would be more useful macro’d to extra mouse buttons.
Keyboard only people are plenty comfortable with frequent shortcuts.
I used to have a keyboard with dedicated copy and paste keys. Never used them.
What keyboard is it? I’m curious.
I can see the benefit, although personally I’m too attuned to ctrl+c,v,z,x
A key I’d really like to see on computer keyboards is a shift key that behaves the same as on a phone, toggling between lowercase, Title Case, and UPPERCASE.
It’d be so useful to be able to select text you’ve already typed and change the format. Phones have done it for years, why not computers? Could be a much better use for the Caps Lock key.
https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Case.html
Emacs has commands for converting either a single word or any arbitrary range of text to upper case or to lower case.
Thanks, will check that out.
I like the mnemonics of c (copy), v (get in there), x (snip-snip), and z (bad idea) as much as I like the similar ones for bold and italics.
text you’ve already typed and change the format. Control (shift) + F3 used to do that in MS word. Highlight your text and Toggle Through The POSSIBILITIES.
Control (shift) + F3 used to do that in MS word.
Yeah, so I’ve just been discovering after googling to see if anyone had asked before. Shame there’s no systemwide method though.
