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As an alternative to Copy and Pasting text, I think it would be useful to have a 'Swap' function. Previously copied or cut text residing on the clipboard will replace the currently highlighted text and the currently highlighted text will replace the text on the clipboard.
Will make quick work for
certain text maipulations.
(?) Clipboard managers
http://www.davecentral.com/clipman.html
[angel, May 02 2001, last modified Oct 04 2004]
[link]
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[bookworm]: Uh... you can on every modern GUI I've seen. "Drag and drop text," it's called, and it was really big in 1990 or so. What are you using? |
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[blahginger]: What kind of text manipulations did you have in mind? |
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I think what [blahginger] wants is that when you highlight text in your document and hit <CTRL>V, the clipboard text appears in your doc, and the text that *was* in your doc goes to the clipboard. I can see the utility of it, and there are several applications which allow multiple clipboard texts (see link). |
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what's wrong with find and replace?
highlight 'new' text. <CTRL>C
<CTRL>H
Key original text
<CTRL>V
....go
.job done |
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Yes, [angel], I know what
[blahginger] is proposing, but I
want to know why. What's a use
case? Describe a text editing
scenario where you'd actually want
to swap the clipboard with the
selection. Depending on the
intent, multiple clipboards and/or
drag-and-drop text may or may not
be suitable replacements. |
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Possible use: I have three ISP phone numbers in my PPP
program. They are dialed in the order entered. Sometimes
I need to dial in to the second one or the last one, and in
those cases I need to get one of those numbers in the
first slot and the first number in a subsequent slot. This
would be perfect for that. |
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So you want to swap two pieces of
text? Select the second one,
*cut*, put the cursor before the
first one, *paste*. Better yet,
with drag-and-drop text, select
the second one and drag it to just
before the first. |
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How does this idea make it any
easier? Do you see why I'm having
trouble seeing why it's useful, now? |
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egnor: you are assuming that there is no text between
the two chunks to be swapped. If I want to swap
paragraphs 2 and 5 of a document then there are some
extra steps involved beyond what you describe. If
implemented properly, it's possible that this idea could
save keystrokes or mouse activity. |
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It would need to do the swap right in the document,
rather than in the clipboard to be most effective.
Something like "highlight paragraph 5, ctrl-X, highlight
paragraph 2, ctrl-shift-V pastes 5 in it's place and transfers
2 to wherever 5 used to be." |
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I use highlight-drag more than anything else, but I can see where I'd use a swap command. Especially in my webpage, where I need to alphabetize, and sometimes goof. |
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Potato and waugs have the idea correct. The specific example that prompted me to submit the idea was a simple coding error where I mixed up the order of some variables. Granted that this idea would save really only one keystroke (Shift +Del) but it seems to happen to me often enough where I think I would use it. As for the keystroke I would guess (Ctrl+Del) ... I use the alternative Ctrl+Ins for Copy, Shift+Ins for paste and Shift+Del for Cut, so Ctrl +Del is the only thing left and I do not think it currently does anything special. |
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This is a brilliant idea blaghinger. |
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(No, I'm not just happy that someone actually posted an idea...I really like this one) |
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I'm a programmer and I see this as a great idea - even if half the people who have commented on it mis-understood what it is. This would be quite simple to code in most applications. Maybe Microsoft could build it into the standard command in the next version of Windows. |
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engor: the idea was to swap the currently highlighted text with the clipboard. Although you do bring up an interesting point...the clipboard (or something) does seem to remember 'where' the currently cut text was cut from , otherwise 'undo' would not work. So theoretically it should be possible cut some text onto the clip board, highlight some other text and then issue a 'swap' command which will swap the highlighted text and the clipboard text and then actually put the new clipboard text back where the original highlighted text came from. (this isn't getting any less confusing is it?) |
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what I do not know is whether the 'undo' command undoes a specific command, or does it actually just revert the whole document back to a previously saved state. |
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OK. The use case here is that you
want to swap two non-adjacent
blocks of text in a document. (I
maintain this is rather rare,
especially compared to swapping
adjacent blocks of text, but
whatever.) |
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With copy and paste, you need to
select, *cut*, move, *paste*,
select, *cut*, move, *paste*. |
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With your concept, you need to
select, *cut*, move, select,
*swap*, move, *paste*. |
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With the "accelerated" concept (it
remembers where the clipboard came
from), you need to select, *cut*,
move, select, *hyperswap*. |
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With drag-and-drop text, you need
to select, *drag-move*, select,
*drag-move* |
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I'm not sure this is a huge win,
especially in the absence of
acceleration, which is getting a
little strange since it relies on
the presence of extra state.
Anyway, undo is generally
implemented not by saving the
entire document (that would be
prohibitively expensive for
multi-level undo) but by keeping
an "undo record" for each action
that records how to, well, undo it. |
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How I see it, this command would only be used to exchange the two particles of text. This could be done with only "swap". You highlight the first particle, <CTRL>S or something, nothing happens, highlight the second one, <CTRL>S again, and they're swaped.
Faster and easier then the "copy swap" command. |
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Obviously "copy" is an improvement
over "cut" alone, since it reduces
down the number of operations
required to perform common tasks. |
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In my annotation, I specifically
listed the steps required for each
version, and criticized the
improvement as minor (at best) on
that basis. I also criticize the
frequency of the task, though if
people tell me they frequently
swap non-adjacent text chunks,
I'll believe them. |
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(After all, we could dream up
wacky macros for uncommon actions
until the cows come home;
something like this is only
interesting if it would actually
speed up a commonly performed
operation.) |
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The "accelerated" version is
"accelerated" because it's
obviously faster than the other
version (which is the original,
because it's what the idea seems
to describe). It doesn't really
matter if the first operation is
"cut" (as I described), "swap" (as
[janko] described), or "copy" (as
you described); the number and
complexity of the operations are
still the same. |
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(If this were actually
implemented, it should probably be
a "swap" operation, and the first
chunk of text should turn a wacky
color or something to indicate its
status.) |
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blahginger, would you add an example to the idea? Clearly we differ on what we think you want to have automated. |
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What I often want to do, which is not quite what you describe, is convert |
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text:"foo zot zot zot bar"
buffer:"gum" |
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text:"bar zot zot zot foo"
buffer:"gum" |
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Emacs is the Way, although I've had interactive Word macros to do something like. |
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I bet they look like garnut alboir sicomg... |
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I would kill for this feature. At least in Excel. |
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more M s to make it compy and swamp |
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This is a good idea, I think I may bake it, albeit for a DTP program on a computer system I doubt many of you've ever heard of.
I like it because I often type something like
'A and B', then decide I want 'B and A'. |
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Here is a very common scenario: |
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myFunction(foo.getBar(stuff)) |
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and now I want to change it to |
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if there was a "swap" key, I would add "bar" on the line above, copy it, go back to the original line, swap bar for foo.getBar(stuff), go back up and paste it after "=". |
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The biggest situations where I can see the 'non-accellerated' version of this being useful is when the selection operations can be more easily done before the paste than after, or when the sequence "paste/select/copy" would not be possible. |
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As an example of the first scenario, suppose that the person is moving single words around, and the clipboard happens to also contain a single word. Double-clicking a word will select it. The sequence "double-click first word; swap; double-click second word; swap; double-click original spot (now holds old clipboard text); swap" will swap two words while leaving the clipboard holding its former contents. The "swap" function means the old clipboard is preserved, but more signifcantly allows a click-drag selection to be replaced with a double-click selection. |
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The latter scenario can occur often in two types of application: (1) applications which have restricted-length fields; it may not be possible to paste the new data into a field without first removing the old data; (2) applications where a paste operation overwrites the destination instead of inserting into it. In some applications of these types, the swap function may be very handy indeed. |
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I often want this for dialog boxes (eg, swapping the to: and cc: fields). In this case the accelerated version would be no good. |
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But, as always, this problem is solvable with auto hot key. Here's a simple script that maps windows-v to "swap highlighted text with clipboard". It works everywhere I've wanted it. |
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ClipboardOld = %ClipboardAll% |
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ClipboardNew = %ClipboardAll% |
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Clipboard = %ClipboardOld% |
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Clipboard = %ClipboardNew% |
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I'm about 9 years too late for this discussion but for readers with a train of though similar to egnor's, and who would like a succinct example of where it would be useful, I think I have one: |
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I am working in MS Excel.
I have the word "Sales" in cell A1 and "$5,000,000" in cell B1.
I want to swap them, to have "$5,000,000" in cell A1 and "Sales" in B1.
The worksheet is protected, and I cannot make use of any cells other than A1 and B1. |
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I like the idea. I like drag and drop text, too... when I
have a real mouse. This would be great on my laptop,
on which I hate the mouse so much that, when using
a word processor or spreadsheet application, I turn
the trackpad off and use keyboard shortcuts. |
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