y pgang rise upM-w
My favourite activity is
yypppppppppppWhy not yy11p eh!
Not nearly as satisfying
I disagree, executing obscure commands like that makes me feel extra smug
I mean, I wouldn’t call yank and paste with a count modifier obscure but it is the best way to minimize keystrokes.
Hah!
Ah, a fellow golfer, I see.
Ctrl+C→Ctrl+Shift+C→Ctrl+Shift+V→Ctrl+V👑 🧊When copying from a browser,
Ctrl + Shift +Ccauses something like the debugger to open.I was sharing the mechanism for copying between vms within Qubes OS, which is a bit different from traditional operating systems. First you copy to the clipboard of the current qube, then copy to the shared clipboard, then paste from the shared clipboard into the clipboard of the destination qube, and finally paste within that destination qube.
If you can’t trust the C button, better use CMD not CTRL, because you are likely on a mac
FACT.
Does anyone here know why it’s unreliable?
In my case it’s mostly that browsers and as such also electron Apps unfocus textboxes when the window is unfocused for seemingly no reason, sometimes without giving visual indication meaning that I need to reselect it to copy it.
Windows.
It wasn’t always like this.
I swear every version of Windows between 3.11 and XP was 100% reliable. Then it just started… slipping.
What’s weird is that it often works on the second try.
If you’ve ever looked at windows desktop application source code (shudder) they have all this wacky shit around event handling in their native C/C++ APIs, which is a lot less clean that what you typically see in other languages / platforms which do similar event handling. It wouldn’t surprise me if that shit is hacky and buggy as fuck on the OS side of that implementation too.
So this would be your ctrl-c press event, and whatever handler code.
Though it’s been like 20 years since I looked at some of this. Maybe it’s better now, but somehow I doubt it.
Microsoft screwing up something as simple as an event listener is peak Microsoft
Because copy and paste started bring over formatting.
If you do control shift V, it removes it and is much more reliable.
No that’s not what I mean (plus it doesn’t work most of the time, either). It’s the copying that often fails for me, which I only notice when I paste and realize “wait a minute, these are the previous contents of the clipboard.”
Because your company makes you use Azure Virtual Desktop to connect to a VM and AVD’s clipboard handling is as unreliable as anything else from Microsoft?
I have to connect to remote PC then from that connect to another remote PC then from that connect to another remote PC and then finally log in. I have to enter the same password like six times. It’s a miracle anything syncs across that mess
That’s a sensible theory for when this happens at work (it’s Citrix in my case).
I’d swear it happens at home on Windows 10 as well, though. Maybe I am pressing it wrong sometimes. Either way, the meme is spot on for me.
I have unconfirmed theories.
- My C and V key are literally the most worn keys on my keyboard. The letters are completely worn off, they’re by far my most used keys. That amount of use probably makes the contacts degrade and less reliable.
- Windows 10 (I think?) introduced a “fancy clipboard” with history and multi paste and generally made it an “app”. In my experience the fancier it is the more failure points, since it’s no longer just a simple OS memory buffer, it has its own application logic.
- Since it’s a global hotkey, the OS has to:
- Handle the interrupt
- Query the currently active window / application for a “copy” output of the currently highlighted context
- Wait for a response
- Place that response into a buffer of some sort
- In a highly volatile asynchronous UI where the user can alt tab at any time, I imagine often what happens is that you just didn’t wait long enough for the data to actually copy. Pressing CTRL+C would be equivalent in reliability as waiting 2 seconds, but it’s more fun to press the button a bunch
Thanks, that’s interesting - I hadn’t thought about the window messages responding to update the all clipboard
It’s odd to me that the paste is almost never the previous clipboard value - it’s basically always null
Handle the interrupt
For better or worse, usb devices need to be polled by the computer all the time, instead of delivering interrupts at the moment of input events. I’m baffled by this fact, but am not versed in hardware design well enough to weigh pros and cons. I assume that the polling is handled by the usb controller, though.
Query the currently active window / application for a “copy” output of the currently highlighted context
Place that response into a buffer of some sort
To my vague knowledge, the various GUIs all request content from the owner of the selection at the moment of pasting, i.e. ctrl-v — presumably both to avoid storing large swathes of pictures and such, and to allow conversion to the target format on the fly. However, iirc some environments require defining the available formats when content is copied, so idk how this meshes with that. I’m not a desktop programmer, so not entirely sure. Perhaps it’s just to simplify copying for the programmer of the source app, instead of exposing the whole innards.
In a highly volatile asynchronous UI where the user can alt tab at any time, I imagine often what happens is that you just didn’t wait long enough for the data to actually copy.
Properly, any input event would be delivered to the app (or rather the UI element) that was active at the time of the event — and presumably the OS UI runs at a higher priority for that. However, in practice it seems to be a toss-up as to whether it really works like this.
Probably just because you typed C + Ctrl by accident.
Nah that’s not at all how that hand movement works. It’s always rest on Ctrl and then find C for me. It would also type “C” over the highlighted text, which would be very noticeable.
Yeah, I guess it would type a C.
Maybe your keyboard lacks NKRO and your cat was sitting on 6 other keys? =P
I wish I had a cat. 🐱😍
On most distros/de(or whatever determines this behaviour, idk) on linux you can just select and then middle mouse click. Its so convenient
Is there a reason why it sometimes doesn’t work? I use arch and i’m kind of a noob when it comes to linux. I did the middle mouse tging for a bit and it seems hit and miss or i’m too stupid. Like sometimes it works, and sometimes it keeps pasting the thing i copied 10 min ago, and it doesn’t matter how often i copy a new thing.
The Ctrl+C and the mouse select are 2 different buffers. Some applications do not accept the mouse select buffer though, and that’s annoying.
In the best case you can CTRL+C some text, then go mouse select another, and paste both in a new place with CTRL-V and middle mouse button. Don’t mix the order tho.
As Synapse already said, applications need to support it.
But also your display manager needs to support it if it’s a wayland one, and there might be a setting for it (also in applications).
The feature is called primary selection, FYI.
Win + V shortcut shows clipboard history on Win 11 and works well for me. I haven’t looked for anything similar on Linux yet using the Super key.
Kde keeps clipboard history in the system tray, its probably possible to bind it to a hotkey as well
Meanwhile in Excel copy-paste is basically wired in with hopes and dreams
A nightmare is a kind of dream, I guess.
“These two columns… I see what you’re doing here, I’ll just continue that formula down ok?”
Great! How about this table? Can we copy this bit here and move it to-
“Your honor I have never seen this man in my life, I don’t speak English, and I think he’s threatening me.”
Scroll wheel too.
(Microsoft bullshit survival tip: You can start a new instance of Excel by right clicking it’s icon and, while holding alt the whole time, selecting something to open (“New workbook” or w/e shows up on the right click menu this week…). This separates the action history, so ctrl+z no longer jumps between workbooks.)
What if you’re in a terminal? Ctrl-C might not be the wisest choice.
I sometimes use Ctrl+w (yank the last word) then Ctrl+y (paste it) in terminal.
Ctrl+a (move the cursor to the beginning of this line — useful to add sudo)
Ctrl+e (move the cursor to the end of this line)
Ctrl+f (move the cursor forward one character)
Ctrl+b (move the cursor back one character)
Ctrl+u (yank the whole line — better than hitting backspace a whole lot)
Ctrl+l (clear the terminal)
Ctrl+d (logout/exit)
For me it’s because, at least historically speaking, there’s usually no immediate feedback whatsoever if the command was successful or not. And then in addition, individual applications can also disable it entirely, often with no indication. Then on top of that, I switch back and forth between OSes, and some like Mac have different command keys and my brain doesn’t always automatically do the translation – especially since I’m using the same keyboard for all of them.
So, from a strictly reactive sensory perspective, my failure rate with just the single ctrl + c command is far from the non-zero it would take for my brain to be convinced that just the one ‘c’ is sufficient. Hitting the ‘c’ many times also gives my brain a tiny bump of endorphins / dopamine / whatever over and above hitting it just the once. It’s like playing the lotto or playing a slot machine, except all I win is paste.
Where’s CTRL + INSERT, SHIFT + INSERT
Watch out this person has computers that still have insert keys!
Don’t they all? Maybe not tkl boards, but maybe via fiction key like on some laptops?
Laptops mostly that keep having keys being removed.
Ah yes the function key.
That key nobody ever uses.
Sometimes I accidentally press the function key on my work-mandated Mac.
For some reason, it brings up a window full of emoji. Cmd+w doesn’t close it and cmd+q quits whatever application I actually wanted to be using.
I hate it.
I’ve been stubbornly using that for years but eventually the convenient placement of c/v won me over.
And shift + del for cut, if I remember correctly.
And here is someone who has absolutely at some point in history modified the source code to GORILLAS.BAS.
Hell yeah! That takes me back!
I haven’t thought about chucking explosive bananas in years.
Edit: And now I’m remembering “Nibbles”!
Hey! It doesn’t mean we’re that ol…fuck.
thank you.
This is a huge problem in windows now and it never used to be.
Everything Microsoft does seems to degrade that shit OS daily.
AI is starting to bear its true fruits.
it pisses me off so much. literally every month some new feature/bug is added to critical software that we use and which results in clearly quantifiable wasted time, money, and stress
the ctrl+c issue alone has cost the company a few thousand dollars in the past year from the few cases I can think of off the top of my head. there’s a bit of software that we use where we need to enter the information that exists in one field into another field. obviously copy paste is the way to do this, it’s simple and it should work, right? except the program is built on Access and has its own problems on top of Windows fucking everything up. so what happens is people paste the previous copy into the new field instead of the newly-attemped copy. and that results in people spending hundreds of dollars to order the wrong part. bc the fucking software is garbage to interact with.
I’ll never understand why successful companies can’t just keep printing money, but give in to the insatiable desire to enshittify.
The one that pisses me off is when remote desktop randomly decides that the clipboard isn’t going to sync over anymore.
On the commandline:
CTRL+SHIFT+C / V
I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, but I seriously sometimes don’t have the “COPY” part execute sometimes … I’ve tried to do only one copy a few times and I’m like “wait, why didn’t it copy”?
it’s not just you, it’s because Windows is fucking shit and just doesn’t do it sometimes
I gotta use macOS occasionally to make ipa builds and I don’t have command key and remapping ctrl doesn’t work so I gotta use mouse
Doesn’t command map to the windows key?
Nope it doesn’t
