Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com content-class: urn:content-classes:message MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Subject: RE: RXVT copy/paste behavior Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2005 10:43:18 -0000 Message-ID: X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: From: "Phil Betts" To: Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by delorie.com id j19AhkLJ012385 On Tuesday, February 08, 2005 7:25 PM Dave Korn wrote: > It's insane. > > Unless you have the precision muscular control skills of a world-class > gymnast, a mouse always moves at least a little bit when you press down on the > button. Which is one reason why I prefer a trackball - moving and clicking are independent operations. They take a bit of getting used to, but after the first day or so, you stop trying to shove it around your desk. Once you've got used to it, the mouse seems very clumsy. I also found that my RSI and back problems disappeared, but YMMV. > This makes it very tricky to select a new window without unintentionally > erasing the contents of the clipboard that you were hoping to paste there > because the mouse moved just enough as you clicked it to select a single > character and the auto-copy destroyed your clipboard contents without asking. I use focus-follows-mouse (aka X-mouse) so no clicking is required. > Destroying user data without any kind of confirmation, are-you-sure, or > requiring a difficult-to-type-accidentally key-combination (such as ctrl-c) is > an appallingly incompetent piece of UI design. It's like having a pistol > without a safety catch, or an ICBM without a dual-key control. A fair point. > FWIW, it's not just X programs that do this. TeraTerm (a 'doze terminal > emulator) One reason I use it ;-) > And don't tell me... I wouldn't dream of telling the great Dave K anything! ksh saved my sanity back in the days when it was just csh or sh. > ...that I'm only ever allowed to select windows by clicking on > the menu bar and that I get what I deserve if I click in the main part of the > window. If you have lots of windows open, the menu bars of many of them are > often obscured. Why should 99% of the window's surface area be verboten for > selecting that window? Again, focus-follows-mouse (and auto-raise if you like that sort of thing - I don't) WFM. > The entire model is screwy. It wastes lots of my time and interrupts my > workflow. The 'doze way works smoothly and is much closer to fail-safe: it's > very hard to accidentally press Ctrl+C and lose data in the same way. Equally, I waste lots of time going back to the original window because I forgot to press ctrl-C. > Real experts... avoid using the pointer altogether? > ...operate a computer with one hand on the mouse and one on the > keyboard *at the same time* anyway. OK, now you're just showing off! I guess it all boils down to personal preference in the end. Until the telepathic HCI comes along (RSN), we'll all struggle to communicate our intentions computers from time to time. Even then, I'm not sure that I would really appreciate a computer that obligingly uninstalled all Microsoft programs every 5 minutes! Phil -- ********************************************************************** This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify the system manager. This footnote also confirms that this email message has been swept by MIMEsweeper for the presence of computer viruses. www.mimesweeper.com ********************************************************************** -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/