Ask Lemmy

CTRL-C / CTRL-V too much? ;)

We do. ctrl+c / ctrl+v

Oh man, you were born too late for the wild 90s era of experimental keyboards

I disagree. [Modifier] + C & [mod] + V works just as good as a dedicated button and you are using the space more efficiently by having multiple uses for one key.

Keyboard already has a lot of buttons. We should be considering which to remove, not any additions

Meh, Ctrl+C Ctrl+V works well.

What I really would like is a Compose key.

The concept is brilliant, you use it with a special key combination to "draw" a special character or symbol.

If you wanted to type a copyright symbol you would hold the Compose key and press O and C in order, then release the compose key.

Here is a list of a few characters with their compose key combinations, every combo is pressed in order while holding the compose key.

To get the letter Ä use " and A

To get the letter Å use o and A

To get the letter Ö use " and O

To get the letter Æ use A and E

To get the symbol ¿ use ? and ?

To get the symbol ¡ use ! and !

To get the symbol ® use O and R

To get the symbol ™ use T and M

To get the symbol € use C and =

To get the symbol £ use L and -

There are plenty more combinations....

I have never used a computer with a compose key, but I love the concept of drawing other characters like this.

Come to the vim side, we have y for copy (yank) and p for paste. We even have d for cut

Not to be that guy, but on Linux if you highlight text you have already copied it to a different clipboard than the CTRL-C/V one, and can paste it by a middle click. This has been the default in Linux since before I used it (I'm 17 years in with Linux), but CTRL-C/V are so in my head that I usually forget to do it.

I was told that this would go away with Wayland, but I just tested it in a Plasma6 Wayland session and it clearly has not gone away.

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.

Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V have been so burned into my muscle memory, relearning to use just a single dedicated button might actually be more trouble for me than just using the standard hotkeys.

That's why I got a mouse with extra buttons on the side, so I can just copy and paste using my thumb.

Having keys to the left of ctrl is a fucking mess! Ine of my kids have a gaming keyboard with a extra column of keys there and it is a pain to use.

What should happen, is move capslock to the locks row on the tip right side. And give us a new meta key there instead! That would be a win-win

Why is it that keyboards have not evolved to have dedicated copy/paste keys left of the main board?

You mean like on a Sun type 4 keyboard, they had this since the early 90’s at least.

If you want this, you can try to find a Sun type 7 keyboard which has a USB connector. You should be able to get it to work on Windows with a bit of remapping of the extra keys.

I generally think that chording is superior to single button presses, which is what is normally done, but if you want a single button, you can either set up some existing button on your keyboard that you don't use to do that or, if you want to keep those, you can get a macro pad, and set one of its buttons up for that.

https://www.amazon.com/macro-pad/s?k=macro+pad

EDIT: Apparently there are some macro pad manufacturers that cater to specifically your ask. Examples:

https://www.amazon.com/BTXETUEL-Select-All-Shortcut-Mechanical-Programmable/dp/B0BW135TW5

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09PKJMK6L

Keyboards already have too many keys. Your fingers are extremely inefficient at certain distances so you should never even touch numpad with proper keyboard design. 10 fingers can combine a lot of keys.

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.

Have you tried the shortcuts for the other side of the keyboard

Ctrl + insert = copy

Shift + insert = paste

Shift + delete = cut

I find them much easier to use than the traditional shortcuts.

I have a mouse that happens to have two extra buttons off to the side and mapping those to 'copy' and 'paste' has been the best thing i've ever done for my productivity. Also mapping middle mouse button to 'screenshot to clipboard' but that's just a personal thing i happen to do a lot

If I was an evil peripheral manufacturer, I'd not only add keys to copy and paste, but I'd add them to the mouse too.

Then I'd have a small display in the keyboard that showed the last five things you copied, and let you select which one you'd paste.

That way users would get used to it, have to buy my gratuitously expensive peripherals with displays in them for no reason, and then not know how to use anything else.

I wish there was a dedicated hotkey combo that worked across all applications for paste plain text

No, it should be on the mouse.

I do.

I don't know about that but I think we need two clipboards, standard. If we had the existing clipboard and a second with dedicated keys that would be very helpful.

If you're using Linux, you can do this easily with custom key bindings.

That button's name... Middle Mouse.

I guarantee I can hit ctrl-c faster than I can move my hand to a different part of the keyboard.

At some point, the populace felt keyboard shortcuts were enough and they have everything else they need on a keyboard. It's the standard, other keyboard designs didn't really quite take off, and most people can barely use a full-sized keyboard anyway.

Some people prefer smaller keyboards, and are willing (and wanting) to have more shortcuts and function layers for ergonomic and desk space reasons.

(If you use a 40% or smaller keyboard, you're weird, and I love/hate you.)

Some other people use so many shortcuts that it becomes so infeasible to remember or press them all, so they get macro pads, or even entire additional keyboards to function as macro pads.

When I started my current job, I thought I was getting a repetitive stress injury from the hundreds of copy pastes I was making daily. Eventually I got used to it, but my hand still hurts occasionally.

I am 100% behind the idea of dedicated buttons!