Comment by int_19h
6 months ago
> Before that, the most commonly copied keystrokes in programmer's editors were the freaking Wordstar ones e.g. in all the Borland products.
Borland switched to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access shortcuts in the last few versions of their TUI - Ctrl+Ins, Shift+Ins, Shift+Del for clipboard, for example. Since Windows also supported them (and still does!) this actually made for a nice common system between Turbo Vision TUI apps and actual GUI in Windows.
And I only recently discovered that Ctrl+Ins and Shift+Ins worked in my Emacs despite me never configuring it; and it even works in the minibuffer. It also worked in a couple of terminal emulators I have tried on Linux. It's really more universal than one might think.
I use Shift+Insert constantly in Spacemacs since I can't use evil-mode "p" in the minibuffer
I think the usual way of doing paste in Spacemacs is yank, C-y.
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It's unfortunate that the accidental standard also happened to be the one requiring the use of both hands. I think that's why Ctrl+X/C/V won in the end.
It doesn't. Shift+Del, Ctrl+Ins,... can be done just using the right hand, while Ctrl+X/C/V uses the left hand. And sometime you may want to use two hands, which can be done in both cases by using the other Ctrl and Shift key. I actually use both kinds of shortcuts, depending on the situation.
Del and Ins are also conveniently close to the cursor navigation keys (arrows, home, end, PgUp, PgDn).
The reason I think Ctrl+X/C/V won out is that it is more convenient when using the mouse, it is also better with nonstandard keyboards where the "Ins" key is awkwardly placed, if not missing entirely.