On Linux, Control-C and Control-V don't work for copying and pasting in terminals. The Control modifier is used for its original purpose of inserting control codes. Instead, terminal apps require an extra Shift modifier, like Control+Shift+C.
But what if there were hidden shortcut combos for copy and paste
Control+C is used to kill a process in the terminal and that shouldn’t be overwritten. If it is, you’d have to create a totally separate key binding to kill a process. Seems unnecessarily complex when Control+Shift+C works just fine.
The article doesn’t suggest using Control+C. It talks about dedicated copy and paste key codes, and you can program your keyboard to map those codes to whatever keys you like. They suggest Fn+C.
standards.xkcd
Holy shit can you guys read the article please? It’s an existing standard and a dedicated keycode
I think at this point XKCD should be a TLD.
I would join lemmy.xkcd in a heartbeat.
We could use Ctrl+Insert and Shift+Insert like in the last three decades, but some of these keyboards apparently forgot about the Insert key.
Well yeah but shift insert is annoying as hell since the keys are so far apart
I confirmed that these already supported a number of terminals plus QT and GTK. They could also be mapped to be more ergonomic with a programmable keyboard:
But Shift+insert currently pastes the primary selection, not the copy-paste clipboard. So it doesn’t do the same as Ctrl+V.
It depends. In Firefox, Chrome and LibreOffice, Shift-Insert pastes the clipboard, not the selection. Viva Linux!
what about shift+insert amd ctrl+insert thats literally already there
Because lots of people don’t have an insert key?
Well, the article proposes to use dedicated copy and paste keys. If you don’t have an insert key, you probably don’t have those either.
Kitty has a setting that makes Ctrl-C copy text, but only if you’ve selected something. If you haven’t it does a regular break. Best of both worlds!
Another KiTTY user! Can you share that setting?
Had to look it up for you. I use (in kitty.conf):
map ctrl+c copy_and_clear_or_interrupt map ctrl+v paste_from_clipboardObviously you only need the first one for the copy bit but having paste as well is nice.
Agreed. The post didn’t suggest that.
For people already using programmable keyboards global copy/paste shortcuts are a nice perk.
I spend nearly all my day in a browser or a terminal and as I use a terminal and browser that already support this, the effect is 99% complete.
I feel like you may have misunderstood the article. It’s talking about how support is increasing for dedicated Copy keys, and that programmable keyboards make it easy to use dedicated Copy keys. The article does not mention changing the behaviour of Ctrl-C.
What else does this say?
Come on, having a 3-key combo for such a common task is a PITA. There’s a reason people have been complaining about this for decades.
The first time you accidentally type Control-C into a terminal and cancel an important process when you meant to copy some text it becomes a PITA.
Exactly. I do it pretty regularly and I’ve been using Linux for 20 years.
And yet people here are still saying “no biggie”. It’s pure status quo bias.
No, it’s recognising that terminal has its own rules and the learned Ctrl+C for copy has no sense… Okay, C-Copy. Some sense. Now, Ctrl+V for… vaste? :)
All while having an Insert fucking button.
In the end, me personally does not care as long as Ctrl+C continues to be the process-killer
And I’m pretty sure this key combination predates copy and paste key combinations.
Sun keyboards had dedicated copy and paste keys.
Also the illusive “Stop” key that you needed to break into the boot rom.
That’s what I came here to say. What’s the point in making an unnecessarily complex “hack” to circumvent what shift-control-c and v does? I’ve never had a problem with it. And there’s something to be said for not making it super easy to paste text to a terminal, especially from places online…