I was just reading this thread… https://sh.itjust.works/post/23476261
…and it got me thinking about something that I’ve wanted for a long time. Why is it that keyboards have not evolved to have dedicated copy/paste keys left of the main board? I’d love to see an additional column of keys left of Esc->Ctrl configurable as macros at least. I do a lot of copy/paste for work. The current shortcuts arent terrible or anything but they’re not exactly comfortable. I’d rather move my whole hand to the left for a macro key than contort to hit the current shortcut.
What do you think?
I disagree. [Modifier] + C & [mod] + V works just as good as a dedicated button and you are using the space more efficiently by having multiple uses for one key.
Keyboard already has a lot of buttons. We should be considering which to remove, not any additions
I don’t think we need to remove anything. I mean if you really want a smaller keyboard that badly you could get one of the ones that removes the number pad.
But as someone who was a cashier long ago before GS1 codes on produce, we got fast at 10-key typing by touch. The thought of doing a spreadsheet or extended number-work without the number pad is unthinkable to me…
I support the number pad as well. I type in numbers into spreadsheets often enough that it’s useful for me.
If we were to delete, I’d say get rid of the F1 keys, get rid of Home / End, get rid of Num lock, etc.
Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V have been so burned into my muscle memory, relearning to use just a single dedicated button might actually be more trouble for me than just using the standard hotkeys.
I have a row of macro keys on my keyboard on the left side. I thought I’d be smart and add copy and paste macros (that were near mm’s away from Ctrl) and I never used them.
Muscle memory would always take over and I’d Ctrl+C Ctrl+V. I realized it would take more work to train myself to use the macro keys (and God forbid I used a different keyboard) than I was saving not having to press a key combination
That’s the first thing i learned using computers, and not something i’ll ever forget.
I wish Ctrl + C wasn’t the break command in Linux so I could map copy to that. It’s harder to presa Ctrl + Shift + C
Maybe if you weren’t so floppy about it
CTRL-C / CTRL-V too much? ;)
Right???
Not exactly. Its just awkward for a bunch of repetitions, especially on MacOS keyboards. CMD+C/V is even worse on those.
Honestly I LOVE being able to have Ctrl and Cmd be different modifiers.
Ctrl-C is break, Cmd-C is copy. And so on. All the Unixy stuff respects Ctrl and ignores Cmd and vice versa for the Mac stuff. Honestly it’s the best keyboard setup I have experienced and the only one which never manages to irritate me.
(Personally I am fine without a dedicated copy/paste key; the only ones I like having dedicated keys for are things like volume up/down for which I’m not aware of a universally understood key combination for)
MY PEOPLE! I’m so used to the CMD key that I made this shitty AutoHotkey script that makes things mostly work the same in Windows. It’s glitchy and imperfect, but it’s better than changing my muscle memory.
If anyone has any recommendations to improve the situation (besides recommending that I switch OSes), then I’m all ears.
The Control key is just badly placed on present-day PC keyboards. I swap Caps Lock and Control.
Your first mistake is using apple products
Can’t help it when your job supplies it to you.
I’ve got Graphene on my phone and Fedora on my desktop.
Personally since I use touch typing being able to hit ctrl-c,v without looking works best for me. Anything else would require me to shift my hands too far away from the “home row” and slow me down.
I use touch typing
As opposed to taste typing??
Some people never learned touch typing.
Never heard it called touch typing before… Always just “typing”
Before millennials, touch typing was a specialized skill on your resume, since “typing” would include hunt and peck, which itself is still fairly common among earlier generations.
It’s a bit awkward to do a basic action
Is this a joke? It’s so easy. What would be better?
Not everyone has the same hands.
Well sure, some people have no hands and need a completely different way to input keys. But I figure we weren’t talking about the exception, and you didn’t actually answer the follow-up question.
If I was an evil peripheral manufacturer, I’d not only add keys to copy and paste, but I’d add them to the mouse too.
Then I’d have a small display in the keyboard that showed the last five things you copied, and let you select which one you’d paste.
That way users would get used to it, have to buy my gratuitously expensive peripherals with displays in them for no reason, and then not know how to use anything else.
Add monthly subscription fees just like Logitech is thinking of doing
Would you like to subscribe to PastePlusPro Premium?
Logitech’s approach would be more like, please subscribe to our monthly service to use the copy paste buttons and history display
Keyboards already have too many keys. Your fingers are extremely inefficient at certain distances so you should never even touch numpad with proper keyboard design. 10 fingers can combine a lot of keys.
Numpad is a MUST for doing quick calc, that top row of numbers always slows me way down.
Also, I need the full numpad in case I’m playing Arma 3, cuz I need to additional keymappings ;)
I wish there was a dedicated hotkey combo that worked across all applications for paste plain text
on linux debian, it’s ctrl+shift+v
Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + V is pretty much the norm. It works in everything I’ve used it in.
Thanks, it seems the support for it has improved since I previously gave up on it.
On mac it’s cmd-shift-v
Same on windows. Works in most applications except some Microsoft Office apps (like Excel and Word) that have a separate “past as text” option.
Powertoys has a “paste as plain text” module that will allow the same keyboard shortcut across all of Windows
I have a mouse that happens to have two extra buttons off to the side and mapping those to ‘copy’ and ‘paste’ has been the best thing i’ve ever done for my productivity. Also mapping middle mouse button to ‘screenshot to clipboard’ but that’s just a personal thing i happen to do a lot
Forward and Back is also nice to map on those buttons if you do a lot of web browsing or navigating through folders.
I use “forward” in my web browser about once a year
I have also been using wgestures which let me have gesture movements with mouse that serve “copy”/“paste” functions. Can’t work without it
Just buy this
Not so subtle dig, but I’ll allow it. 😉
Oh man, you were born too late for the wild 90s era of experimental keyboards
While it doesn’t have a copy and paste key, my omnikey ultra is certainly wacky.
I think that everyone who really wants that will spend a half an hour learning how to remap keys.
True. My caps lock is already my mute button. Now I’m going to figure out which keys to remap as copy/paste cause that’s an awesome idea
Nice. Also because it has a little light that’s now on whan you mute things.
My caps lock is ctrl and, in vim insert mode, my tab is escape
One of my computers has a clipboard key that’s for pasting.
Except I’m totally used to ctrl-C ctrl-V, so I never use it.
(Adapted from XKCD)
There are 5 zillion hotkeys.
“5 zillion hotkeys? Ridiculous! We should add dedicated buttons for common operations.”
There are now 5 zillion hotkeys and “media buttons” nobody uses.
…
Seriously though, a lot of old keyboards in ye olde computers had dedicated buttons for a lot of things, but then people figured out software defined, remappable key commands are actually pretty neat. You don’t need a dedicated “Help” key if it’s usually mapped to F1. Moving back to dedicated keys is, ummm, sometimes unwarranted?
We do. ctrl+c / ctrl+v
Most people would use dedicated single copy/paste buttons more than page-up/down or home/end.
No and yes. If the copy and paste buttons would be at the position of page-up/down, I think many people would still use Ctrl+C because it is quickerto reach.
If the keys would be at easily reachable positions, then sure.
But… That’s on the right side of the keyboard. I guarantee it’s faster to press Ctrl-C/V since my left hand is already there than it would be to move it or my mouse hand to Home/End.
But I realize there are left-handed people and other use-cases…
I 100% agree with what you are saying. Not to be contrary, but just because it amuses me, I use page up/down and home/end all the time. You’re still right.
page-up/down or home/end.
I don’t even think about those keys
Well, they don’t think about you either.
If you’re using Linux, you can do this easily with custom key bindings.
On linux middle mouse is traditionally paste, with just selecting text being copy.
This is one of the greatest features ever. I constantly use it. I always get screwed up if I end up on a windows system and select text and wonder why I can’t paste it with a click.
is Ctrl c and Ctrl v too hard for OP? it’s damn near universal with no extra effort to setup…
There are some work that requires me to copy and paste a lot of times, after a while, it kind of strains the fingers a bit.
point is, this already exists, no reason to add special keys when there are already work arounds for people that want it different.
Doesn’t work in Linux consoles.
I generally think that chording is superior to single button presses, which is what is normally done, but if you want a single button, you can either set up some existing button on your keyboard that you don’t use to do that or, if you want to keep those, you can get a macro pad, and set one of its buttons up for that.
https://www.amazon.com/macro-pad/s?k=macro+pad
EDIT: Apparently there are some macro pad manufacturers that cater to specifically your ask. Examples:
https://www.amazon.com/BTXETUEL-Select-All-Shortcut-Mechanical-Programmable/dp/B0BW135TW5
Got myself a cheap Chinese programmable foot switch with three switches that enables me to do exactly that without fucking up my normal layout. And it can be switched to other things depending on the application as well. Very useful.
