Re: Sponges
- From: r norman <r_s_norman@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 23 Jul 2009 20:53:02 -0400
On Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:33:33 -0700 (PDT), odin <odinoodin@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Wow, in another few days we can have our own private copy of
Wikipedia, right here on talk.origins. No more having to slog through
a web browser to get the information -- all you need is a news reader!
To wit... (or should that be "To twit"?)...
It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into
Clipboard (software).
In human-computer interaction, cut and paste and copy and paste offer
user-interface paradigms for transferring text, data, files or objects
from a source to a destination. Most ubiquitously, users require the
ability to cut and paste sections of plain text. This paradigm has
close associations with graphical user interfaces that use pointing
devices such as a computer mouse (by drag and drop, for example).
History
The term "cut and paste" comes from the traditional practice in
manuscript-editings whereby people would literally cut paragraphs from
a page with scissors and physically paste them onto another page. This
practice remained standard as late as the 1970s. Stationery stores
formerly sold "editing scissors" with blades long enough to cut an
8-1/2"-wide page. The advent of photocopiers made the practice easier
and more flexible.
The act of copying/transferring text from one part of a computer-based
document to a different location within the same or different computer-
based document was a part of the earliest on-line computer editors. As
soon as computer data entry moved from punch-cards to online files (in
the late 1960s) there were "commands" for accomplishing this
operation. The earliest editors, since they were designed for "hard-
copy" terminals, provided keyboard commands to delineate contiguous
regions of text, remove such regions, or move them to some other
location in the file. Since moving a region of text required first
removing it from its initial location and then inserting it into its
new location various schemes had to be invented to allow for this
multi-step process to be specified by the user. These schemes involved
putting the text into some temporary location (aka, "clipboard") for
later retrieval/placement.
Lawrence G. Tesler (Larry Tesler) first transferred "cut and paste"
into the context of computer-based text-editing while working at Xerox
Corporation Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in 1974-1975.
Apple Computer widely popularized the computer-based cut-and-paste
paradigm through the Lisa (1981) and Macintosh (1984) operating
systems and applications. Apple mapped the functionalities to key-
combinations consisting of a special modifier key held down while
typing the letters X (for cut), C (for copy), and V (for paste),
choosing a handful of keyboard sequences to control basic editing
operations. The keys involved all cluster together at the left end of
the bottom row of the standard QWERTY keyboard, and each key is
combined with a control or special modifier key to perform the desired
operation:
Z to undo
X to cut
C to copy
V to paste
CUA (for OS/2) also uses combinations of the Insert, Del, Shift and
Control keys. Early versions of Windows used the IBM standard.
Microsoft later adopted similar key-combinations with the introduction
of Windows.
Similar patterns of key combinations, later borrowed by others, remain
widely available today in most GUI text editors, word processors, and
file system browsers.
-lord fnord
Your Xerox Parc/Apple-centric view of the world completely forgets the
enormous impact of CP/M and WordStar on the world of computers and
computer users. Lanier, IBM, Wang, and others all had special purpose
computers running as word processors for offices but CP/M with
WordStar and dBase brought computing into the ordinary office
structure. Cut and paste was commonplace before the Apple.
.
- References:
- Sponges
- From: Tapestry
- Re: Sponges
- From: r norman
- Re: Sponges
- From: odin
- Sponges
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