My normal practice for copy/paste, is to select with the mouse then use middle-click to paste in the selected text. This has worked well for many years.
Recently, while reviewing the “midori” browser, I had problems with that. I was posting to opensuse forums. I selected text from a command prompt window, and used middle-click to paste it in.
It did not paste. I had to select in Klipper, then use CTRL-V to paste in.
Since then, I have noticed the same problem with “epiphany”. More recently, it showed up with “chromium”. So I retested with “konqueror”, and it has the same problem. However, “firefox”, which I am using for this post, is fine.
Now maybe this is because “midori”, “epiphany”, “konqueror” and “chromium” are all Webkit browsers (“chromium” now uses a fork from webkit).
But here’s the strange thing: Select and middle-click works fine with all of those browsers for pasting a URL into the browser. Last evening, I posted to a blogspot blog using “chromium”, and select/middle-click worked fine there. So perhaps this is really an opensuse forums problem. And, if so, that might explain why there have been some mangled code blocks in some recent posts.
One of the things I always disliked with Windows, was having to use CTRL-C/CTRL-V or use an edit menu. Unix/linux has alway been easier for copy/paste with the select/middle-click. So I’m frustrated to fine that doesn’t work with some browsers on opensuse forums.
On Sat, 08 Feb 2014 14:56:01 +0000, nrickert wrote:
> It did not paste. I had to select in Klipper, then use CTRL-V to paste
> in.
>
> Since then, I have noticed the same problem with “epiphany”. More
> recently, it showed up with “chromium”. So I retested with “konqueror”,
> and it has the same problem. However, “firefox”, which I am using for
> this post, is fine.
>
> Now maybe this is because “midori”, “epiphany”, “konqueror” and
> “chromium”
> are all Webkit browsers (“chromium” now uses a fork from webkit).
Does the paste operation work with an editor, say, with kate?
Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Sat, 08 Feb 2014 14:56:01 +0000, nrickert wrote:
>
>> It did not paste. I had to select in Klipper, then use CTRL-V to paste
>> in.
>>
>> Since then, I have noticed the same problem with “epiphany”. More
>> recently, it showed up with “chromium”. So I retested with “konqueror”,
>> and it has the same problem. However, “firefox”, which I am using for
>> this post, is fine.
>>
>> Now maybe this is because “midori”, “epiphany”, “konqueror” and
>> “chromium”
>> are all Webkit browsers (“chromium” now uses a fork from webkit).
>
> Does the paste operation work with an editor, say, with kate?
And does the copy/paste work with those browsers in similar forms on
other forums (which might behave differently to the URL box)
I think you need to be very specific about what both the source and
target applications are for each operation that works or not. For
example, I doubt that whether or not a character string is a URL
matters; it seems much more likely that the exact source and destination
are important. Also have you tried a different desktop to rule out
anything KDE specific?
> I think you need to be very specific about what both the source and
> target applications are for each operation that works or not. For
> example, I doubt that whether or not a character string is a URL
> matters; it seems much more likely that the exact source and destination
> are important. Also have you tried a different desktop to rule out
> anything KDE specific?
The middle mouse copy-paste is a Linux feature that should work in any
application, and any desktop. It is plain text only.
There is another type of copy-paste, more modern, that depends on the
source and destination application, and includes other type of data,
such as format, images, etc. It does not work between all apps, rather
the contrary, just a few.
I don’t have “kate” installed. It works fine with “kwrite”, and with “vi” in a terminal.
I’ve been testing browsers, and reviewing them on my blog. As part of that testing, I have logged into dslreports.com. And I have not experienced any copy/paste problems posting there. However, I did not keep a detail log on what I posted running which browser.
Using select and middle-click for copy/paste is pretty much second nature. I’ve been using linux or solaris for 18 years. I do it without thinking. And pasting into reply editing on this forum is the only place where I have encountered a problem.
This seems to be a WebKit problem. Copy/pasting by selecting and middle-click doesn’t work here either, not in Konqueror (with the WebKit backend) and neither in Epiphany. And not only here in the forum, but also not in OBS’s text editor (which is somewhat simpler), it just inserts a ‘$’ there.
Explicitely selecting “Copy” and “Paste” from the context menu, or pressing the Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V keyboard shortcuts works fine though.
And KHTML doesn’t even show the advanced Editor, that’s the only reason why I’m using the WebKit engine for Konqueror anyway.
Carlos E. R. wrote:
> On 2014-02-10 13:40, Dave Howorth wrote:
>
>> I think you need to be very specific about what both the source and
>> target applications are for each operation that works or not. For
>> example, I doubt that whether or not a character string is a URL
>> matters; it seems much more likely that the exact source and destination
>> are important. Also have you tried a different desktop to rule out
>> anything KDE specific?
>
> The middle mouse copy-paste is a Linux feature that should work in any
> application, and any desktop. It is plain text only.
Agreed in principle* but not in practice. I sometimes have problems but
have never bothered working out exactly what combination of components
is causing the difficulty, let alone what the cause actually is.
However, based on my experience, I stand by what I wrote.
*Actually middle mouse copy-paste is an X Windows feature, not a Linux
one or even a GNU/Linux one.
I was able to use select/middle-click to copy/paste into the edit window for posting. I did not save my test post, but I did preview it before abandoning it (by closing the tab). That’s an explicit example where it works in another forum, but not at opensuse forums.
It is interesting that you have a similar problem with OBS. Perhaps the forum software and OBS are sharing a common javascript function.
Yes, webkit might be part of the problem. But the fact that it is specific to this forum suggests that there’s some forum code that triggers the problem.
Well, pasting with the middle mouse button here in the forum’s editor does work when you switch the editor to source mode (1st button in the toolbar) as I just found out.
That’s definitely a good enough workaround for me for now. I often switch to source mode anyway to correct the formatting…
Thank you. I had not noticed that source mode was available. I’ll probably use that more often. Perhaps that will avoid the problem of strange fonts getting into posts.
In the WYSIWYG mode, there’s probably some javascript at work. And the javascript probably checks the browser ID, and does things differently for WebKit than for firefox. Perhaps there’s something a wee bit broken there. In any case, I’m fine with source mode.
I’m currently using firefox, so I can’t test if using source mode is an effective workaround. I’ll try that when I next use a webkit browser.
I would imagine something like that as well. If that’s the editor’s javascript that’s broken, or WebKit’s javascript engine is a different question though.
I had not noticed middle-click working in source mode upto now. (I never thought that would make a difference)
But you know what?
I just tried to change Konqueror’s browser identification to Firefox, and it works in WYSIWYG mode as well!
So it’s definitely the javascript trying to be clever but doing something wrong in case it detects WebKit I’d say…
(Maybe it tries to workaround a bug in earlier WebKit versions?)
On Mon, 10 Feb 2014 18:16:01 +0000, nrickert wrote:
> wolfi323;2623720 Wrote:
>> Well, pasting with the middle mouse button here in the forum’s editor
>> does work when you switch the editor to source mode (1st button in the
>> toolbar) as I just found out.
>
> Thank you. I had not noticed that source mode was available. I’ll
> probably use that more often. Perhaps that will avoid the problem of
> strange fonts getting into posts.
>
> In the WYSIWYG mode, there’s probably some javascript at work. And the
> javascript probably checks the browser ID, and does things differently
> for WebKit than for firefox. Perhaps there’s something a wee bit broken
> there. In any case, I’m fine with source mode.
>
> I’m currently using firefox, so I can’t test if using source mode is an
> effective workaround. I’ll try that when I next use a webkit browser.
It may be that there’s some sort of Javascript override (maybe in the CSS,
since that’s consistent between openSUSE sites).
