The biggest pain with this is when you want to highlight some other text to paste over. For example I use the keyboard method for copying urls and pasting into my address bar, otherwise when you select all on the address bar you copy that instead.

At least in Firefox you don’t need to clear out the urlbar before pasting into it; what you paste replaces whatever is there. Dunno about Chrome.

I usually use middle paste on a desktop mouse but keyboard paste on a touchpad device. As for copying on highlight it depends how you manage your windows, if you use a traditional floating WM and typically click windows to select them you end up with a lot of single character copies messing with your clipboard. Doubly so in the touchpad case again. Or if you like to highlight to bulk delete/replace or if you like to highlight to simply highlight the section on your terminal as you read a manpage or whatever in another window or probably more use cases that didn't immediately come to mind.

Point being it's more about use case matching than one option being the dark ages and another being The One Right Way™. Layer on that some like using clipboard history and others just want a single parking space and it gets even more blurry.

I'm one of those people who highlights lines as I read them to help me keep focus. Plus, I'd rather have explicit copying via a specific action than something that just happens automatically on highlight.

Because maybe I don't want to clobber my clipboard with every damned thing I highlight?

On Linux there is a separate “clipboard” that gets “clobbered” every time you highlight something. See my other comment on the matter or https://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.6/doc/xorg-docs/specs/ICCCM....

I know; I just pretend that clipboard doesn't exist. I've never found it convenient for anything other than pasting to terminals that screw up the CTRL-C/CTRL-V shortcuts.

Hmm. I am genuinely curious, how is it less convenient for you? To copy something to the clipboard you have to select it and press control–c, then to paste it you have to click where you want it to go and press control–v. That’s not very hard, certainly. But to use selection instead you only have to select it, then hover over where you want it and middle click. That’s fewer steps!

Of course I am assuming that your hand is already on the mouse. However, you said that you highlight things frequently as you read them, so I assume that’s what you meant.

because as I said, if I already have something on the clipboard, I don't want it to be overwritten by everything I highlight. a non-copying reason to highlight is the "search for" feature in a browser, I use that all the time. a very common thing is to highlight some text, then highlight some other text in an input field or text editing program, then paste to replace the highlighted text with the copied text. if all I had was the middleclick buffer, this wouldn't be possible.

Ah, I see. It looks like you have three similar reasons.

The first is something I guess I don’t do. If I select something that I want to paste somewhere, then I’m going to paste it right away; I already know exactly where it goes.

The second is that searching in applications you use frequently replaces the selection? That’s not how it’s supposed to work. Applications are supposed to claim the primary selection only when the user explicitly selects something, not merely when something is highlighted to make it more visible. Sad to hear that any application gets this one wrong; that’s supposed to be a pretty easy thing to get correct.

The third is about pasting into textboxes. This one is more subtle, but pasting from the primary selection into a textbox is supposed to replace the content of the text box, rather than appending to it. Certainly Firefox does for the urlbar, though to be honest I’m not sure that I’ve never noticed one way or the other if it does for anything else. Most of my text editing is done in Emacs, which doesn’t use textboxes very much, and which has a lot of other ways to quickly enter text without needing a lot of copy and paste.

Thanks for answering; it’s really interesting to see just how different people’s use–cases really are. I find selection to be more convenient because it’s simpler, while you find it to be less convenient because the programs you use aren’t as thoughtful, or because you use selection for other things. I guess we should both be glad that Linux implements both styles!

>The first is something I guess I don’t do. If I select something that I want to paste somewhere, then I’m going to paste it right away; I already know exactly where it goes.

I often want to paste things multiple times. e.g. I paste an interesting URL to an instant message chat, then maybe 10 minutes later I paste the same URL to someone else.

>The second is that searching in applications you use frequently replaces the selection?

no that's not what I mean. I'm talking about this: https://imgur.com/QiQiBLT.png

suppose I didn't know what "appending" meant and I wanted to search for it. I can highlight it, rightclick, then choose "search Google". I don't want to paste "appending" anywhere, I just want to search Google for it. but the act of highlighting it will overwrite whatever is in the middleclick buffer. so if that's the only clipboard I had, searching the web would interfere with copypaste, which is stupid.

>This one is more subtle, but pasting from the primary selection into a textbox is supposed to replace the content of the text box, rather than appending to it.

again that's not what I meant. I'm talking about taking a portion of the text in one textbox and replacing it with the text from elsewhere. for example, suppose I want to change part of the message I'm typing right now with lorem ipsum. it looks like this:

[1] https://imgur.com/GWldV00.png (ctrl-c copies)

[2] https://imgur.com/63RrISF.png (highlight destination. this overrides middleclick buffer, destroying the lorem ipsum copy if it were placed there)

[3] https://imgur.com/zGavx2b.png (ctrl-v pastes)

Sure, I understand. You can also do that by reversing the order of the two operations (paste into the document, then select and delete the unnecessary text), or you can use both selections (select the text to be copied while holding down alt, then select the text to replace while not holding alt, and middle click from the secondary selection by holding alt).

But that’s not really the point; the point is that it’s nice to have both mechanisms available. Some people will find selections more convenient, others won’t.

Middle-click paste is a non-starter for anyone who uses a pointing stick (TrackPoint), since the middle mouse button is held down to scroll with the stick. Pointing stick users will usually try to disable the selection clipboard to avoid having unwanted text pop up in unexpected places.

Regardless, from my experience, the terminal is the only place where Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V are not the standard shortcuts to copy and paste on Linux. These shortcuts seem to be universal everywhere else.

I do it every day and never have issues with scrolling vs pasting.

The biggest issue is that some apps don't play nice with the x clipboard.

When I hold down the middle mouse button to scroll, change my mind, and then release the middle mouse button to move the cursor elsewhere, that results in an unwanted paste. That has happened enough times, especially in code editors, for the selection clipboard to be an annoyance for me whenever I am using a keyboard equipped with a pointing stick.

Some desktop environments and Linux apps have the option to turn off middle-click paste, though this preference is not always honored. I respect the preference of those who do like the selection keyboard, and I don't even have a problem with it being the default. But, I don't think it should be forced on all users, and I don't think decisions about other core desktop functions (like Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V) should be made under the assumption that the selection clipboard is enabled.

> That has happened enough times, especially in code editors

Ah, that's probably the difference. I don't usually scroll through a text editor (as I'm usually using vim). I can definitely see how it'd be an issue in a graphical text editor.

Note that the select and middle click method is technically the same as drag and drop. It also doesn't use the same copy-paste buffer as copy and paste.

Not to mention many Linux users hate having to use the mouse.

If you use Miro in Firefox on Linux, middle click dragging moves you around the board and pastes your clipboard contents in as a post-it.

Since when did highlighting text copy it? That would be a true nightmare for me as I use highlighting to focus when I read, extensively.

On Linux, it has basically always worked that way. However, there are essentially two¹ different clipboards. Of course some applications could do things differently, but usually they will use what you think of as the clipboard for keyboard shortcuts like control–c and control–v, while selecting things with the mouse uses a separate system².

There are some interesting differences between them as well. When using the clipboard your application sends whatever you copied to the clipboard and pasting copies it out of the clipboard. With selection, however, the application merely announces that the user has selected something in that application. When you middle–click to paste, the application you pasted into must send a message to whichever application was most recently used to select something (relayed via the X server), and the reply contains the selected data.

https://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.6/doc/xorg-docs/specs/ICCCM...

¹ Actually, there are three³. CLIPBOARD for control–c/v, PRIMARY for selecting with the mouse, and SECONDARY for selecting with the mouse while holding down alt.

² But of course these two systems are implemented using the same messages to and from the X server. They simply have different conventions for how they are used.

³ Actually, there are as many as you care to implement. These three are simply conventional; applications are free to use other names to identify other communication channels.

⁴ … Profit!