Comment by ninkendo
2 years ago
I love CMD because it’s part of the copy/paste shortcut but not used for any terminal control codes. So there’s no confusion about whether you’re going to accidentally SIGTERM something in the terminal by trying to copy text.
I really really wish I could have this behavior on Linux… but alas, every app under the sun chooses its own copy/paste shortcut and they all use ctrl+C/V by convention so you can’t configure it globally without rewriting every app (ok maybe you could narrow it down to a few GUI libraries like gtk/qt/etc but it’s still a huge undertaking.)
I’d settle for “ctrl-c is copy if text is selected, SIGTERM otherwise” logic, which I think Windows’s console uses, but none of the Linux terminals I’ve tried support that. I’m left with ctrl-shift-C for copy, which leaks into my muscle memory, then I accidentally use that combo in the web browser too and it opens developer tools or something. So annoying.
Copy on selection is ubiquitous in all terminal apps. Shift+insert can be a reliable "paste" shortcut in most places.
Shift+ins is CUA, an actual standard. Which makes far more sense than parroting Microsoft’s decision to use CTRL as a modifier, aping Mac OSs keyboard shortcuts in Windows 3.1.
That’s fine for paste, but copy is the real problem. Also, shift and insert are very very far apart from each other and are not one-handable if you’re holding the mouse with the other hand.
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TIL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access
I can’t stand X11-style copy-on-select/middle-click-paste, and disable that everywhere if that’s what you’re referring to. I habitually highlight text as I read it and hate it when it blows away my existing copy buffer. I want explicit copying, I just don’t want it to collide with SIGTERM.