

GNOME Disabling Middle Click Paste - alrs
https://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-settings-daemon/commit/plugins/xsettings/gsd-xsettings-manager.c?id=696e04d41a485f84870a98c85b819979928b69e9

======
jsnell
I dislike the UX changes done in Gnome 3 as much as anyone, and middle-click
paste is firmly wedged in my muscle memory. But this is actually a change
that's justifiable, unlike the general change for change's sake.

Having two completely separate mechanisms for copy-paste (not talking about
the UI, but the underlying clipboard/selection) genuinely is confusing. It's
never consistent across applications. Will I be able to middle-click paste
from this web browser to that terminal, or from this emacs to that Skype
window? Or do I need to select + Ctrl-Insert in this terminal to copy to that
other window. Pretty much no way to know without learning it by trial and
error. After almost two decades of using X I'm still surprised weekly about
pasting the wrong thing due to this stuff. (And any time I paste text to an
IRC terminal, I make sure to paste it to a throwaway window first to verify
I've really got the right content).

And really, while I will continuously use select + middle-click to copy, it's
only because of muscle memory. It's not some huge productivity boost over
using the keyboard shortcuts. And once it stops working, the muscle memory can
easily be retrained. (Remember how you probably complained when browsers
stopped treating middle-click with an url in the selection as "open url"? I
have no trouble admitting that I whined like hell about the massive loss in
productivity it'd cause me. A month later I didn't particularly miss it,
because I was automatically using a different workflow.)

The primary selection is a ridiculous vestige. Good riddance. I'm less
enthusiastic about what they're proposing to waste the middle button on.

~~~
merlincorey
I don't use Gnome so it doesn't matter to me but...

> Having two completely separate mechanisms for copy-paste (not talking about
> the UI, but the underlying clipboard/selection) genuinely is confusing. It's
> never consistent across applications. Will I be able to middle-click paste
> from this web browser to that terminal, or from this emacs to that Skype
> window? Or do I need to select + Ctrl-Insert in this terminal to copy to
> that other window.

In my experience, middle click is an X thing and is the only thing generally
guaranteed to work practically everywhere.

For this reason, it seems not justifiable to me.

~~~
eqyiel
Not disagreeing with you, just wanted to say in case you didn't know: shift-
insert has the same effect and doesn't require reaching for the mouse.

~~~
Pxtl
With that in mind, if they want to free up the naked middle-click button they
could enroll a bucky bit. Ctrl+middleclick or Meta+middleclick.

------
kbuck
This change was backed out: [https://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-settings-
daemon/commit/pl...](https://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-settings-
daemon/commit/plugins/xsettings/gsd-xsettings-
manager.c?id=e204eddcdbfb9f8d722355fab1643330c7d10c25)

~~~
parley
However, the comment for re-enabling middle click paste seems to indicate that
it will indeed be removed in the future:

"We're not really ready for this change, and we haven't messaged it properly.
After discussion with Allan Day and Jakup Steiner, we'll defer this change
until the next cycle."

~~~
keithpeter
A free/open source project that worries about 'messaging'? Has something gone
wrong?

As others have commented, I've always found that having two copy paste
processes cause a slight mental pause sometimes. I tend to use middle drag
middle click paste in terminal applications and the drag to highlight, select
edit/copy then click in desired position, select edit/paste for graphical
applications.

Interesting to see how this pans out. Gnome has significant contributions from
Red Hat staff. Red Hat have suggested they will be releasing the desktop RHEL7
with Gnome Classic as the default UI to minimise training costs for
customers.[1]

[1] [http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Red-Hat-confirms-
GNOM...](http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Red-Hat-confirms-GNOME-
Classic-Mode-for-RHEL-7-1887469.html)

------
VMG
I'm curious to see how this plays out. The X default with two clipboards is
insane, but I think the best option is to merge those into one and keep the
middle click.

The design docs:
[https://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeOS/Design/Whiteboards/Selections](https://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeOS/Design/Whiteboards/Selections)

~~~
silon3
Agreed. I could live with this change, too. To bad gnome shell ruined gnome
usability in other ways, so it's no longer relevant.

~~~
username42
I am curious of your grief against gnome shell. Since Ubuntu has switched to
unity, I have lost a lot of time to find an alternative. I am satisfied with
Ubuntu-Gnome that I have installed on the computer of my father. I intend to
switch all my computers to Ubuntu-Gnome. Maybe you have found issues that
could annoys me also.

------
dlsym
Sometimes I get the feeling that there are only idiots or assholes working on
gnome :-/

It all started with this whole: "Yeah - let's dumb it all down."-movement.

"Improvements" like these are just disgusting. (Edit: This falls into the same
category of great ideas like the "spatial nautilus".)

~~~
brokenparser
I liked spatial nautilus, it endorsed KISS. Other operating systems that had
the same basic interface include classic Mac OS and Windows 95. Both of them
were easy to use as well (until they crashed) though the latter messed up by
having a virtual desktop folder become the root of a tree with more virtual
folders that didn't have anything to do with filesystems (they kept going
downhill ever since).

------
jangeboers
Gnome does its best to make itself irrelevant. New users aren't coming in, and
the faithful unix geeks all passed on to better things. Openbox ftw!

------
Afal
GNOME 4 will be just one button that makes fart noises when you press it

~~~
vacri
In 4.1 they'll remove the fart noise, because 'not everyone will have sound
hooked up, and we want to provide a consistent experience'...

~~~
brokenparser
In 4.2 they'll have the button press itself after a time-out unless you cancel
it, because the user might forget to press it.

------
username42
I do not understand how they go from
[https://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeOS/Design/Whiteboards/Selections](https://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeOS/Design/Whiteboards/Selections)
where all the example are touchpad oriented (no middle button, just touch and
long press) to the conclusion that the usual behaviour of middle button should
be killed ?

------
AlexanderDhoore
Here's a pretty truthful evaluation of the direction Gnome is going, by the
smart, geeky folks from the Linux Action Show:

(Just watch 20 seconds... you'll get it)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Z8K...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Z8Kz27PC3_E#t=1593)

~~~
brokenparser
Skip to 26:11

------
doe88
I would say this is the one feature I miss the most on OS X, copy just by
selecting text and paste with middle click.

~~~
RBerenguel
I think you can add this with BetterTouchTool. At least I managed to add an
almost plumbing rule with middle clicking on my old MB, I have to try it on
the new, though

------
raphinou
The middle click to paste is one of the great features I use continuously, and
often show to windows users who find it useful too.

------
barrkel
Selection copy and middle-click paste is both good and bad.

As a highlight-reader, I don't like automatic copy on selection. It's too easy
to clobber the selection clipboard. It also affect usability on basic things
like copying something from the terminal to paste into a browser's search box.
Naturally, you want to delete the existing contents of the search box, but
selecting it all to delete it clobbers the very thing you want to paste.

The setup I have on Windows with Cygwin and mintty is my preference. There is
only one clipboard, and normal GUI selections don't have any affect on it.
However, selection in the terminal copies into the clipboard, and middle-click
in the terminal pastes the clipboard. Combine that with keyboard shortcuts for
pasting the clipboard in the terminal, and a couple of command-line scripts (I
call mine 'c' and 'p') for using copy and paste with pipes, and everything
works pretty smoothly.

As it is on Linux, my 'c' reads stdin and stuffs it into both primary and
clipboard buffers, while my 'p' takes an argument 's' to print out the primary
buffer, otherwise it prints out the clipboard buffer. It's a pain when you end
up pasting the wrong thing. Meanwhile, middle-click in UI apps is very rarely
used because (a) it requires too much precision in aim - the text usually ends
up exactly where you middle-click, rather than the current position of the
cursor - and (b), I usually want paste to replace a selection, but the act of
selection clobbers what I'm trying to paste...

------
bifrost
Guess I'm glad I don't use this stuff. WTH. My productivity would slow to a
crawl if I couldn't middlebutton paste.

Maybe they could work on something useful, like fixing memory leaks or making
it not hugely bloated?

------
inthewind
I like the middle mouse paste, or rather the highlight to copy more. But it
can catch me out.

What I find catches me out more though, is the tap to click on a touch pad. I
do like it, but I often get tripped up by it. I therefore declare It's flawed
- rip it out ;)

Good to question these things.

I do think the chorded keyboard shortcuts that may be ingrained in many, are
actually a difficult combo for the novice. I'd suggest that a mouse selection
is easier, but alas that's a really difficult thing to do for mouse newbs too.
I can still struggle with mouse text selection.

------
angersock
Really?

What a bunch of jerks--hasn't this been standard behavior for quite some time?

~~~
angersock
More details here:

[https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=665193](https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=665193)

Sometwhat telling:

    
    
      (In reply to comment #2)
      > Breaking a default that has been in X forever is not   
      desirable. In this case,
      > it is a good default. Leave it alone. Bastien, please   
      do not do this.
    
    
      Disabling broken behaviour by default is a good thing. It 
      would be a GTK+ specific XSetting, which would only be 
      disabled by default based on your XSettings manager. If 
      you use gnome-settings-daemon, then it would be disabled 
      by default.
    
      The people that paste their passwords to IRC will thank us.
    
    

Literally _everyone_ in the bug thread is like "Please, don't do this/why
would you do this?" and Bastien is like "nope nope better for the users hush".

What a bunch of tools.

~~~
dalai
A reply by a Gnome dev to an older bug (536271) about this is even more
telling:

    
    
        I would even go as far as to disable middle mouse 
        paste without exposing any GUI option for this [...] 
        A hardcore unix person will shout and scream if we 
        try to remove it, yet it is flawed. We should remove 
        it and use a one, predictable way of copy & pasting.

~~~
keithpeter
c.f Jef Raskin's idea of the 'monotonous' interface, i.e. an interface in
which common actions could be performed in one way only, and that one way
could be predicted from context reliably. He thought that the result would be
an interface that is easy to learn quickly.

And that raises the old issue of 'experts' with the interface wanting more
control.

I actually like Gnome Shell, but I can see how a decision making process that
depends on what one developer thinks is good for users may have problems in
the longer term...

~~~
rrmm
The devs seem like they're on some sort of holy war to purify the gui. The
problem is that interface design (like anything else) is about trade-offs.
GNOME needs some folks that have been through this cycle and understand it.

------
kragniz
Although this particular feature isn't going to affect me, since I'm primarily
a touchpad user, I'm not a fan of the path they're going with imitating iOS-
style selection handles. Sure, they can be useful if you only have a
touchscreen, but seem to always look ugly and feel awkward to use.

------
borplk
For the last couple of years, every time I hear about a change in GNOME, it
almost reads as if the developers are screaming "F*CK YOU EVERYONE LEAVE US
ALL ALONE WE HATE YOU".

------
trippy_biscuits
Gnome (Bastien), please accept _my_ middle click. How long will it be before
someone forks gnome just to get X paste behavior back? I hope they call it
Troll.

------
corobo
I hope it's optional at worst.. This is one of the features I am struggling
really hard to get working on my Windows box :(

------
baq
As somebody who for all of his life used C-c and C-v for copy/paste, I
wouldn't miss it at all. highlight to copy messes my workflow up.

