Hacker News Reader

Comment by dragontamer | Hacker News Reader

> What you describe also works on X11 and probably what MacOS uses too.

Except its no where near as smooth or universal as in Windows. In Linux, you have to worry about KDE programs vs GNOME programs having different clipboards, for example.

Its also why compatible suites of programs (ie: Adobe) can be so useful when those custom formats come into play. Adobe can copy/paste layers from Photoshop and send them over to other programs. If the photoshop layer isn't understood, it seems to become a Bitmap, which works when I'm on a VBulletin forum over in Firefox land.

---------

Copy/paste works on files / file-managers, images, text, HTML. Yes, any OS could do the same thing, but they largely don't in my experience.

View on HN

> Except its no where near as smooth or universal as in Windows. In Linux, you have to worry about KDE programs vs GNOME programs having different clipboards, for example.

I am no sure where you get this idea. The clipboard is an X11 shared resource and any program taking control of it removes what any other had on it before.

> Its also why compatible suites of programs (ie: Adobe) can be so useful when those custom formats come into play. Adobe can copy/paste layers from Photoshop and send them over to other programs. If the photoshop layer isn't understood, it seems to become a Bitmap, which works when I'm on a VBulletin forum over in Firefox land.

The same exists on X11, programs can define custom metadata and define a hierarchy of different metadata and associated data on the clipboard and any application can decide for itself which formats it understands and which it does not.

I've personally built software that puts images on clipboards, and falls back with uris to that image if direct images not be supported by whatever reads it.

>In Linux, you have to worry about KDE programs vs GNOME programs having different clipboards, for example.

I don't worry about this on linux because it's not the case.

I suppose if I were on windows I would have to worry about legacy programs that only understand UCS-2 not being able to talk to modern programs that only understand UTF-8.

>Its also why compatible suites of programs (ie: Adobe) can be so useful when those custom formats come into play. Adobe can copy/paste layers from Photoshop and send them over to other programs. If the photoshop layer isn't understood, it seems to become a Bitmap, which works when I'm on a VBulletin forum over in Firefox land.

I'm able to paste images from GIMP, Krita, and Thunar into forums just fine.

Nah man, clipboard on Linux, mainly KDE, is really good. KDE splits out selected text, and ctrl+c text, into separate clipboards, allowing for some really good workflows.

Selecting text and middle clicking is so much faster than ctrl+c, ctrl+v. Having the two separate, allows you to essentially copy two separate things at once, and paste them separately, which is great for filling out forms.

Also, KDE provides an absolute gem of a clipboard manager, which stores all recent copies in to a list, from which entries can be browsed in order to recopy some text that you may have copied a while ago. IDK where you got the idea that Gnome apps have a different clipboard, as I have never experienced that. Maybe that is an old thing? Definitely not how it is now, thats for sure.

Copy/paste works on files / file-managers, images, text and HTML. This is not a Windows only experience. In fact, the clipboard manager even has little file icons, and image previews, for copied objects.

> Also, KDE provides an absolute gem of a clipboard manager, which stores all recent copies in to a list

In windows 10 and up, win + v to see (and the first time, enable) the clipboard history selector

Yes I love this Windows 10 feature.

Note that KDE has had it pre Windows 10 though.

> KDE splits out selected text, and ctrl+c text, into separate clipboards, allowing for some really good workflows.

Just for completeness & correctness: that's an X11 feature, not related to KDE, and predates KDE by several years. I can't easily find the history of it, but this Keith Packard paper[0] on it is dated 1990 so it's necessarily older than that…

[0] http://keithp.com/~keithp/talks/selection.ps

(pg. 5, "4.1. Selection names" - PRIMARY, SECONDARY, CLIPBOARD. I don't think SECONDARY is used much these days.)

MacOS clipboard is also pretty good, I'm often pleasantly surprised by it. I don't use Windows enough in the right ways to compare them, I wouldn't be shocked if Windows is even better.

But even if old, it's still notable that such an old concept/technology works so well, and there are few newer inter-process communication methods that work as reliably or with as good UX!

Who invented the "clipboard", Xerox PARC? No, wikipedia just credits two individuals, Pentti Kanerva and Larry Tesler .

They're about equal, MacOS generally is better about letting my copy a thing in one application and paste the whole object in another. Windows however has RDP, which I've used as a file transfer mechanism by base64 encoding files, I thought about writing software that would use it as a half duplex communications channel.

Mac also has something that lets you copy/paste clipboard across machines (including between iOS and MacOS), but I don't know how it works technically and haven't actually used it myself.

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/copy-and-paste-betw...

The conversion behavior you describe is also what happens in MacOS.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com