Interesting Article - Linux users going back to $M

[Victor Odhner]

Alan Dayley wrote:
> Default behavior in X is to put something on the clipboard as
> soon as you highlight it.  This means that to perform the
> operation I describe above you must highlight what you want
> to end up with, paste it next-to what you want to replace,
> highlight what you don't want and delete or cut it.
> 
> The number of moves or clicks is about the same but when you
> are used to the former, the latter can get annoying when you
> forget the difference (as I sometimes do).

Where it especially burns me is when the destination is
the address line of a browser.  When you click onto the
address line, the whole line is highlighted.  In Windows/Mac,
you can then use ^C to replace the address line with what
is in the clipboard.  Under X, you've blown it at this point --
the clipboard now contains what you wanted to replace.

So, you can scroll the address line to the end, append the
new URL, and then backspace through the old URL to delete it,
but that can be extremely slow.

The highlight-to-replace action is SO second nature to me,
it is just really painful having to do it the X way.

But the other thing that really hurts is the individual
apps keeping their own clipboards.  Bring up two copies of
Gedit (I think?).  Put junk in both.  Highlight something
in copy A, go to copy B, middle-click and the paste takes
place.  But if you go to copy B, click on Edit, and click
on paste, it does NOT WORK.  Likewise if you try to use
^V to paste.  Those Windows-ish operations only work if
the copy was from within the same copy of the editor.
That's why the solution has to be a global one in X.

Hans, I don't want to take away your X behavior.  I just
want to have the option at the user level for the behavior
I "grew up" with.

Vic