Should mintty's copy-on-select option be on by default?

Rolf Campbell rcampbell-cygwin@dragonwaveinc.com
Thu Jul 29 13:42:00 GMT 2010


On 2010-07-29 08:02, Andy Koppe wrote:
> On 29 July 2010 08:24, JOHNER Jean 066030 wrote:
>> Thank you for all the answers to my original request below. This was very instructive.
>> In conclusion:
>> - to get middle-mouse paste of the selection with Mintty, Options/Mouse/copy on select had to be checked, which is not the default.
>
> Middle button paste really does work fine by default. It pastes
> whatever is in the clipboard. However, when you select something, it
> is not automatically placed in the clipboard unless you enable 'Copy
> on select'.
>
> This is a difference in approach between Windows and X11: in X, the
> selection is automatically made available for pasting, whereas in
> Windows you need to explicitly copy it to the clipboard using the Copy
> menu command or one of its keyboard shortcuts. The Windows approach
> has the advantage that you can select something without clobbering the
> clipboard content. It has the disadvantage that an additional action
> is required when you just want to copy&paste.
>
> Mintty currently defaults to the Windows approach. I've seen enough
> questions about this though that I'm thinking about changing this.
>
> Selecting without copying isn't actually much use in mintty, because
> the only other thing you can do with a selection is to try to 'Open'
> it. And I guess most users do come from a Unixy background.
>
> Opinions?
>
> Andy
>

I've been a Windows user for most of my life, but I still prefer 
copy-on-select for a terminal.  I vote for it being the default.


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