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?
CTRL-C / CTRL-V too much? ;)
Right???
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Are you an older millennial? I’m a younger millennial and I’ve never even so much as seen a typewriter in person let alone typed on one. We were taught to type in school though on computers.
I’m a bit younger but remember typewriters being around. Did your school have the old non-electric kind or the kind with a plastic box? The electric ones were nice because the keys were easier to press and they could buffer the input to avoid jams. The really nice ones let you type a full line on a digital display before printing.
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.
In some terminals. urxvt for example just uses the selection buffer. And either is reasonable, because
Ctrl + Cto send sigterm predatesCtrl + Cto copy.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
Wut? Is this a joke that it’s difficult to paste in Vim? Because it’s literally just
p.You do need to be in command mode, so alright, there is some complexity there, but you won’t get much closer to just a single key, as OP wants.
You can just move the modifier keys around. I have Caps Lock as Ctrl and Ctrl as CMD.
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
I also have Caps Lock als Ctrl, but I leave Cmd where it is by default, and I just disable the Ctrl key.
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
The Control key is just badly placed on present-day PC keyboards. I swap Caps Lock and Control.
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.
Having grown up on chiclet Mac keyboards, you should try a mechanical keyboard. It’s such a much better experience
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.