On cut, copy, paste etc...

On cut, copy, paste etc...

[Angelo Graziosi]

Opening 'Edit' from the menu bar, there is:

Undo     C-_
Cut    <cut>
Copy  <copy>

If the option CUA is enabled, then:

Undo     C-z
Cut    <cut>
Copy  <copy>


But, in the first case, it should be:

Undo     C-_
Cut      C-w
Copy     M-w

while in the second,

Undo     C-z
Cut      C-x
Copy     C-v

Perhaps, some guys can do this with a few clicks and it could be 
back-ported to Emacs 22. Or not?


Cheers,
    Angelo.

Re: On cut, copy, paste etc...

[Lennart Borgman (gmail)]

Angelo Graziosi wrote:
> Opening 'Edit' from the menu bar, there is:
> 
> Undo     C-_
> Cut    <cut>
> Copy  <copy>
> 
> If the option CUA is enabled, then:
> 
> Undo     C-z
> Cut    <cut>
> Copy  <copy>
> 
> 
> But, in the first case, it should be:
> 
> Undo     C-_
> Cut      C-w
> Copy     M-w
> 
> while in the second,
> 
> Undo     C-z
> Cut      C-x
> Copy     C-v
> 
> Perhaps, some guys can do this with a few clicks and it could be 
> back-ported to Emacs 22. Or not?


I have a patch for this to cua-base.el. I will be glad to offer it if 
someone is interested in adding this to Emacs.

Re: On cut, copy, paste etc...

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2008 11:26:04 +0200
> From: Angelo Graziosi <angelo.graziosi@alice.it>
> 
> Opening 'Edit' from the menu bar, there is:
> 
> Undo     C-_
> Cut    <cut>
> Copy  <copy>
>
> [...]
> But [...] it should be:
> 
> Undo     C-_
> Cut      C-w
> Copy     M-w

Not really: if you type "C-h c" and then click Edit>Cut, you will see
that it runs a command that is different from what C-w does.

Re: On cut, copy, paste etc...

[Angelo Graziosi]

Eli Zaretskii ha scritto:
>> Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2008 11:26:04 +0200
>> From: Angelo Graziosi <angelo.graziosi@alice.it>
>>
>> Opening 'Edit' from the menu bar, there is:
>>
>> Undo     C-_
>> Cut    <cut>
>> Copy  <copy>
>>
>> [...]
>> But [...] it should be:
>>
>> Undo     C-_
>> Cut      C-w
>> Copy     M-w
> 
> Not really: if you type "C-h c" and then click Edit>Cut, you will see
> that it runs a command that is different from what C-w does.

It prints

<menu-bar> <edit> <cut> runs the command clipboard-kill-region

while on http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/tour/ it says:

C-w Kill region ("cut")

and I do not understand the difference...

In any case, what I meant it was that instead of

Cut   <cut>

it would be nice

Cut  KEYS-SHORTCUT

etc... if possible.


    Angelo

Re: On cut, copy, paste etc...

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2008 12:31:06 +0200
> From: Angelo Graziosi <angelo.graziosi@alice.it>
> CC: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> > Not really: if you type "C-h c" and then click Edit>Cut, you will see
> > that it runs a command that is different from what C-w does.
> 
> It prints
> 
> <menu-bar> <edit> <cut> runs the command clipboard-kill-region

Exactly.  And C-w runs kill-region, which is a different command,
although the effect is very similar.

> while on http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/tour/ it says:
> 
> C-w Kill region ("cut")
> 
> and I do not understand the difference...

Here, "cut" is used as a term known to many users, to make the
Emacs-specific "kill region" easier understandable by newbies.

> In any case, what I meant it was that instead of
> 
> Cut   <cut>
> 
> it would be nice
> 
> Cut  KEYS-SHORTCUT
> 
> etc... if possible.

<cut> _is_ a key, it just doesn't exist on many keyboards.  But some
keyboards do have it.

Re: On cut, copy, paste etc...

[Angelo Graziosi]

Eli Zaretskii ha scritto:

> ...
> <cut> _is_ a key, it just doesn't exist on many keyboards.  But some
> keyboards do have it.

Ok, I assume the same for <copy>. In any cases it is not very clear and 
it looks to me incoherent with the other shortcuts,

Undo  C-_
Select All  C-x h
etc...

But this is only my opinion...

Thanks,
    Angelo.

Re: On cut, copy, paste etc...

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2008 14:24:30 +0200
> From: Angelo Graziosi <angelo.graziosi@alice.it>
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> Eli Zaretskii ha scritto:
> 
> > ...
> > <cut> _is_ a key, it just doesn't exist on many keyboards.  But some
> > keyboards do have it.
> 
> Ok, I assume the same for <copy>. In any cases it is not very clear and 
> it looks to me incoherent with the other shortcuts,
> 
> Undo  C-_
> Select All  C-x h
> etc...

Perhaps it would be good to modify kill-region so that it behaves like
clipboard-kill-region when invoked from the menu bar.  Then we could
remove clipboard-kill-region from the binding, and the menu will show
what you want.

Re: On cut, copy, paste etc...

[Sven Joachim]

On 2008-08-01 15:32 +0200, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> Perhaps it would be good to modify kill-region so that it behaves like
> clipboard-kill-region when invoked from the menu bar.  Then we could
> remove clipboard-kill-region from the binding, and the menu will show
> what you want.

How do you mean that?  If the menu item shows the C-w shortcut for
kill-region but does not do the same as C-w, that would be no less
confusing.

And as nearly every other modern application uses the clipboard for
copy'n paste keyboard shortcuts, Emacs not doing this by default will
irritate novice users anyway.

Sven

Re: On cut, copy, paste etc...

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Sven Joachim <svenjoac@gmx.de>
> Cc: Angelo Graziosi <angelo.graziosi@alice.it>,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2008 16:38:05 +0200
> 
> On 2008-08-01 15:32 +0200, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> 
> > Perhaps it would be good to modify kill-region so that it behaves like
> > clipboard-kill-region when invoked from the menu bar.  Then we could
> > remove clipboard-kill-region from the binding, and the menu will show
> > what you want.
> 
> How do you mean that?  If the menu item shows the C-w shortcut for
> kill-region but does not do the same as C-w, that would be no less
> confusing.

Did you look at the code of clipboard-kill-region?  It does little
besides calling kill-region.

> And as nearly every other modern application uses the clipboard for
> copy'n paste keyboard shortcuts, Emacs not doing this by default will
> irritate novice users anyway.

Sorry, I'm not following: what is it that Emacs doesn't do by default,
or won't be doing under my suggestion?

Re: On cut, copy, paste etc...

[Sven Joachim]

On 2008-08-01 17:26 +0200, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> Did you look at the code of clipboard-kill-region?  It does little
> besides calling kill-region.

Yes, I looked at it.

>> And as nearly every other modern application uses the clipboard for
>> copy'n paste keyboard shortcuts, Emacs not doing this by default will
>> irritate novice users anyway.
>
> Sorry, I'm not following: what is it that Emacs doesn't do by default,
> or won't be doing under my suggestion?

It doesn't use the clipboard for kill-region, yank and friends.  Under
X, that is; the Windows default is different.

Sven

Re: On cut, copy, paste etc...

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Sven Joachim <svenjoac@gmx.de>
> Cc: angelo.graziosi@alice.it,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2008 17:52:07 +0200
> 
> >> And as nearly every other modern application uses the clipboard for
> >> copy'n paste keyboard shortcuts, Emacs not doing this by default will
> >> irritate novice users anyway.
> >
> > Sorry, I'm not following: what is it that Emacs doesn't do by default,
> > or won't be doing under my suggestion?
> 
> It doesn't use the clipboard for kill-region, yank and friends.  Under
> X, that is; the Windows default is different.

Do you mean literally the clipboard (as opposed to X selection, that
is)?  Because C-w does set the X selection, and yank does look at the
X selection.  Isn't that what other GUI applications do on X?

Re: On cut, copy, paste etc...

[David De La Harpe Golden]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> Do you mean literally the clipboard (as opposed to X selection, that
> is)? 

See below...

> Because C-w does set the X selection, and yank does look at the
> X selection.  Isn't that what other GUI applications do on X?

Uh.

There are many X Selection "objects", some of which have basically
nothing to do with any user-visible "selection" (e.g. mediating who's
the current compositing manager...).

Under fd.o conventions, the PRIMARY X Selection is supposed to
correspond to the last selected-by-the-user thing (the thing currently
highlighted on screen, typically) and be inserted with middle-button
click.  Another, the CLIPBOARD X Selection, is supposed to correspond to
the last explicitly cut/copied (typically C-x/C-c) thing and be inserted
with paste (typically C-v).  The two are supposed to be essentially
separate.

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/clipboards-spec

With unpatched emacs, no matter what settings you set, there /is no way/
to get it to do the exact "right" (w.r.t. fd.o) thing. Emacs tends to
set and get the "wrong" one, or set and get both, and generally
irritates and confuses users used to fd.o conventions.

Some long-time (often pre-fd.o or even pre-ICCCM) X/emacs users like it
that way and dislike fd.o conventions in the first place (the fd.o
conventions make X app cut/copy/paste seem much like other platforms,
with the highlight/middlebutton PRIMARY interaction as a "bonus").

I supplied rather invasive patches some time ago (Feb 2008) to allow
emacs to _optionally_ better support fd.o conventions in addition to all
existing possible emacs bahaviours, discussed ad nauseum on-list in
monster thread "Improving X Selection?". They probably need more work
before even I would think they're suitable for inclusion though (and
we're in feature freeze now :-) ).

Re: On cut, copy, paste etc...

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2008 20:01:45 +0100
> From: David De La Harpe Golden <david@harpegolden.net>
> CC: Sven Joachim <svenjoac@gmx.de>, emacs-devel@gnu.org, 
>  angelo.graziosi@alice.it
> 
> There are many X Selection "objects", some of which have basically
> nothing to do with any user-visible "selection" (e.g. mediating who's
> the current compositing manager...).
> 
> Under fd.o conventions, the PRIMARY X Selection is supposed to
> correspond to the last selected-by-the-user thing (the thing currently
> highlighted on screen, typically) and be inserted with middle-button
> click.  Another, the CLIPBOARD X Selection, is supposed to correspond to
> the last explicitly cut/copied (typically C-x/C-c) thing and be inserted
> with paste (typically C-v).  The two are supposed to be essentially
> separate.
> 
> http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/clipboards-spec
> 
> With unpatched emacs, no matter what settings you set, there /is no way/
> to get it to do the exact "right" (w.r.t. fd.o) thing. Emacs tends to
> set and get the "wrong" one, or set and get both, and generally
> irritates and confuses users used to fd.o conventions.
> 
> Some long-time (often pre-fd.o or even pre-ICCCM) X/emacs users like it
> that way and dislike fd.o conventions in the first place (the fd.o
> conventions make X app cut/copy/paste seem much like other platforms,
> with the highlight/middlebutton PRIMARY interaction as a "bonus").

Okay, but what does all this have to do with the original issue?  You
are asking for a different behavior of C-w; I'm saying that no matter
how it behaves wrt the X selection and the clipboard, we could modify
kill-region in small ways so that clipboard-kill-region would be
unnecessary, and we then could bind kill-region to menu-bar>Edit>Cut.

Re: On cut, copy, paste etc...

[Lennart Borgman (gmail)]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> Okay, but what does all this have to do with the original issue?  You
> are asking for a different behavior of C-w; I'm saying that no matter
> how it behaves wrt the X selection and the clipboard, we could modify
> kill-region in small ways so that clipboard-kill-region would be
> unnecessary, and we then could bind kill-region to menu-bar>Edit>Cut.


It sounds like a good thing to me.

Beside that I suggest applying something like the patch below to 
cua-base.el for similar reasons.

Index: cua-base.el
===================================================================
RCS file: /sources/emacs/emacs/lisp/emulation/cua-base.el,v
retrieving revision 1.98
diff -u -b -r1.98 cua-base.el
--- cua-base.el	27 Jun 2008 07:34:47 -0000	1.98
+++ cua-base.el	1 Aug 2008 19:44:20 -0000
@@ -1514,6 +1514,61 @@

  (defvar cua--saved-state nil)

+(defun cua-show-cua-in-edit-menu()
+  "Change the binding hints in the menus for CUA keys.
+If `cua-mode' is on then this function may change the binding
+hint text in the edit menu for the CUA keys C-c, C-x and C-v to
+show those strings.
+
+For this to happen the variable `cua-show-cua-in-edit-menu' must
+also be non-nil and `cua-enable-cua-keys' must be t.
+
+Otherwise the binding hints are reset to their default, ie
+<copy>, <cut> and <paste>.
+
+This function should be called after turning on/off `cua-mode'."
+  (if (and cua-mode
+           cua-show-cua-in-edit-menu
+           (eq cua-enable-cua-keys t))
+      (progn
+        (define-key menu-bar-edit-menu [paste]
+          '(menu-item "Paste"
+                      ;;clipboard-yank
+                      cua-paste
+                      :help "Paste text from clipboard"
+                      :keys "C-v"))
+        (define-key menu-bar-edit-menu [copy]
+          '(menu-item "Copy"
+                      ;;clipboard-kill-ring-save
+                      cua-copy-region
+                      :enable mark-active
+                      :help "Copy text in region to the clipboard"
+                      :keys "C-c"))
+        (define-key menu-bar-edit-menu [cut]
+          '(menu-item "Cut"
+                      ;;clipboard-kill-region
+                      cua-cut-region
+                      :enable mark-active
+                      :help "Delete text in region and copy it to the 
clipboard"
+                      :keys "C-x"))
+        )
+    (define-key menu-bar-edit-menu [paste]
+      (cons "Paste" (cons "Paste text from clipboard" 'clipboard-yank)))
+    (define-key menu-bar-edit-menu [copy]
+      (cons "Copy" (cons "Copy text in region to the clipboard"
+                         'clipboard-kill-ring-save)))
+    (define-key menu-bar-edit-menu [cut]
+      (cons "Cut" (cons "Delete text in region and copy it to the 
clipboard"
+                        'clipboard-kill-region)))))
+
+(defcustom cua-show-cua-in-edit-menu t
+  "Show C-c, C-x and C-v in the edit menu."
+  :set (lambda(sym val)
+         (set-default sym val)
+         (cua-show-cua-in-edit-menu))
+  :type 'boolean
+  :group 'cua)
+
  ;;;###autoload
  (define-minor-mode cua-mode
    "Toggle CUA key-binding mode.
@@ -1604,7 +1659,8 @@
  		 (if (and (nth 1 cua--saved-state) (nth 2 cua--saved-state)) " and" "")
  		 (if (nth 2 cua--saved-state) " PC-Selection" "")
  		 (if (or (nth 1 cua--saved-state) (nth 2 cua--saved-state)) " 
enabled" "")))
-    (setq cua--saved-state nil))))
+    (setq cua--saved-state nil)))
+  (cua-show-cua-in-edit-menu))


  ;;;###autoload

Re: On cut, copy, paste etc...

[Kim F. Storm]

"Lennart Borgman (gmail)" <lennart.borgman@gmail.com> writes:

> Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> Okay, but what does all this have to do with the original issue?  You
>> are asking for a different behavior of C-w; I'm saying that no matter
>> how it behaves wrt the X selection and the clipboard, we could modify
>> kill-region in small ways so that clipboard-kill-region would be
>> unnecessary, and we then could bind kill-region to menu-bar>Edit>Cut.
>
>
> It sounds like a good thing to me.
>
> Beside that I suggest applying something like the patch below to 
> cua-base.el for similar reasons.

Please do.  Thanks.

+(defun cua-show-cua-in-edit-menu()

Please add a space before ()

-- 
Kim F. Storm <storm@cua.dk> http://www.cua.dk

Re: On cut, copy, paste etc...

[David De La Harpe Golden]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> Okay, but what does all this have to do with the original issue?

How C-w and menu-bar->edit->cut differ : one sets the
primary selection, and the other the clipboard....

(well, actually depends on x-select-enable-primary/clipboard
customisation too)

>  You are asking for a different behavior of C-w;

In my own opinion, menu-bar cut should ultimately do the same as C-w,
but not before other changes are introduced so that people
can still separately set primary and clipboard _somewhow_.

> I'm saying that no matter
> how it behaves wrt the X selection and the clipboard, we could modify
> kill-region in small ways so that clipboard-kill-region would be
> unnecessary, and we then could bind kill-region to menu-bar>Edit>Cut.

BUT there are people who apparently prefer C-w setting PRIMARY (see last
thread...). They may then _like_ the menu being different, for when they
_do_ want to set CLIPBOARD. (similar for C-y and paste getting).

My patch allowed, for active region, keyboard, menu+toolbar and mouse
operations, separate configuration of which x selections were got/set
(and whether the kill-ring was involved sometimes).

Certainly, if there was a decision to have menu-bar cut always do the
same thing as C-w, that patch would have been a bit simpler, but it
would be noticeably incompatible with current X11 emacs, which at least
allows _some_ way of separately affecting primary and clipboard, even if
it is weird.

Re: On cut, copy, paste etc...

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2008 21:30:50 +0100
> From: David De La Harpe Golden <david@harpegolden.net>
> CC: svenjoac@gmx.de, emacs-devel@gnu.org, angelo.graziosi@alice.it
> 
> > I'm saying that no matter
> > how it behaves wrt the X selection and the clipboard, we could modify
> > kill-region in small ways so that clipboard-kill-region would be
> > unnecessary, and we then could bind kill-region to menu-bar>Edit>Cut.
> 
> BUT there are people who apparently prefer C-w setting PRIMARY (see last
> thread...).

How many people prefer one to the other?

Anyway, we could have 2 different menu items.