Ask YC: Dragging text from OSX terminal windows?

Posted by pg on Monday December 29, 2008 @04:55PM
from the self-post dept.

About 6 months ago I got a Macbook Air. It's an improvement over my old Powerbook in most respects, but not one: dragging text from terminal windows.

In older versions of OSX, it was very easy to highlight text in a terminal window and then click on it and drag it into another window. In more recent versions this doesn't work so well: the sw seems to have been tweaked to err on the side of interpreting the second click as changing the highlighted area, unless you pause and hold the cursor absolutely still for a bit before clicking. I usually work by dragging changed code into a repl, so this makes it much harder for me to program.

Does anyone know of any settings I can change in OSX to undo this "improvement?"

( 8 comments | 3 points | on HN )

Re:Ask YC: Dragging text from OSX terminal windows? by centuren on Monday December 29, 2008 @10:46PM (#413883)

To be honest, I got lost with the concept of dragging text as a productivity tool. Why don't you stick with copy and paste for a while (combined with the convenient window switching keyboard short cut), and see if you end up taking the quotes away from "improvement".

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask YC: Dragging text from OSX terminal windows? by pg on Wednesday December 31, 2008 @12:23AM (#415161)

What is the convenient window switching keyboard shortcut?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask YC: Dragging text from OSX terminal windows? by damien on Wednesday December 31, 2008 @01:28AM (#415210)

⌘tab to cycle apps

⌘` to cycle windows within an app

I think that's what he's referring to.

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Re:Ask YC: Dragging text from OSX terminal windows? by makecheck on Monday December 29, 2008 @06:00PM (#413624)

I had thought this was just the behavior of Cocoa, and so any text field based on it will have the "pause, then drag".

There are Carbon-based terminals for Mac OS X that will drag text instantly. I'm partial to MacTelnet. :)

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Re:Ask YC: Dragging text from OSX terminal windows? by st3fan on Monday December 29, 2008 @06:49PM (#413673)

MacTelnet is a joke right? It is worse then iTerm.

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Re:Ask YC: Dragging text from OSX terminal windows? by makecheck on Monday December 29, 2008 @07:04PM (#413686)

No...it does what I need it to do.

Anything specific to back that up?

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Re:Ask YC: Dragging text from OSX terminal windows? by unalone on Friday January 02, 2009 @12:24PM (#417457)

I just tested this with two Terminal windows running under OS 10.5.6. I didn't get the + icon indicating I could drag, but dragging still worked.

It helps if you lift your finger slightly as you click. It doesn't detract from the speed of the operation and makes it much more reliable.

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Re:Ask YC: Dragging text from OSX terminal windows? by Hates_ on Monday December 29, 2008 @05:08PM (#413555)

Hmmm not sure. It works well for me on my iMac.

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