Don't you hate it when people answer questions with a huge copy and paste from wikipedia?

Answer 1

Cut, copy, and paste
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Copy and paste)
• Interested in contributing to Wikipedia? •
Jump to: navigation, search
This article is about computer text editing. For rheological properties of pastes such as toothpaste or putty, see Paste (rheology).
Windows, GNOME and KDE keys for cut and pasting: Control + x (cut), Control + c (copy), Control + v (paste)
Windows, GNOME and KDE keys for cut and pasting: Control + x (cut), Control + c (copy), Control + v (paste)

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).
Contents
[hide]

* 1 History
* 2 Cut and paste
* 3 Copy and paste
* 4 Common implementations
o 4.1 Cut
o 4.2 Copy
o 4.3 Paste
* 5 Additional differences between moving and copying
* 6 Comparison to verb-object paradigm
* 7 Multiple clipboards
* 8 References
* 9 See also

[edit] History
This short section requires expansion.

The term cut and paste derives from the traditional practice in manuscript-editing 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 1960s. 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.

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.[1]

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

Microsoft later adopted similar key-combinations in Windows. Common User Access (in Windows and OS/2) also uses combinations of the Insert, Del, Shift and Control keys.

Similar patterns of key combinations, later borrowed by others, remain widely available today in most GUI text editors, word processors, and file system browsers.

[edit] Cut and paste

Computer-based editing can involve very frequent use of cut-and-paste operations. Most software-suppliers provide several methods for performing such tasks, and this can involve (for example) key-combinations, pulldown menus, pop-up menus, and/or toolbar buttons.

1. The user selects the text or file for moving by some method, typically by dragging over the text or file name with the pointing-device or holding down the Shift key while using the arrow keys to move the text cursor
2. The user performs a "cut" operation via key combination, menu, or other means
3. Visibly, "cut" text immediately disappears from its location.
4. Conceptually, the text has now moved to a location often called the clipboard. The clipboard typically remains invisible. On most systems only one clipboard location exists, hence another cut or copy operation overwrites the previously stored information. Many UNIX text-editors provide multiple clipboard entries, as do some Windows clipboard-manager programs such as Microsoft Office.
5. The user selects a location for insertion by some method, typically by clicking at the desired insertion point
6. A paste operation takes place which visibly inserts the clipboard text at the insertion point. (The paste operation does not typically destroy the clipboard text: it remains available in the clipboard and the user can insert additional copies at other points)

Whereas cut-and-paste often takes place with a mouse-equivalent in Windows-like GUI environments, it may also occur entirely from the keyboard, especially in UNIX text editors, such as Pico or vi. The most common kind of cutting and pasting without a mouse involves the entire current line, but it may also involve text after the cursor until the end of the line and other more sophisticated operations.

When a software environment provides cut and paste functionality, a nondestructive operation called copy usually accompanies them; copy places a copy of the selected text in the clipboard without removing it from its original location.

The clipboard usually stays invisible, because the operations of cutting and pasting, while actually independent, usually take place in quick succession, and the user (usually) needs no assistance in understanding the operation or maintaining mental context.

[edit] Copy and paste

Copy-and-paste refers to the popular, simple method of reproducing text or other data from a source to a destination. It differs from cut and paste in that the original source text or data does not get deleted or removed. The popularity of this method stems from its simplicity and the ease with which users can move data between various applications visually — without resorting to permanent storage.

Copying often takes place in graphical user interface systems through use of the key-combinations Ctrl+C (used for killing the running process in UNIX terminals); or by using some other method, such as a context menu or a toolbar button. Once one has copied data into the area of memory referred to as the clipboard, one may paste the contents of the clipboard into a destination using the key combinations Ctrl+V, or other methods dependent on the system. Macintosh computers use the key combinations ⌘C and ⌘V.

The X Window System maintains an additional clipboard containing the most recently selected text; middle-clicking pastes the content of this "selection" clipboard into whatever the mouse pointer is on at that time.

Most terminal emulators and some other applications support the key combinations Ctrl-Insert to copy and Shift-Insert to paste. This is in accordance with the IBM Common User Access (CUA) standard.

[edit] Common implementations

[edit] Cut

* control-X
* control-W (Emacs)
* d (vi)

[edit] Copy

* control-C
* command-C (Apple)
* highlight (X Window system PRIMARY selection)
* control-Insert (Common User Access)
* y (vi)

[edit] Paste

* control-V (generic)
* middle-click (X Window system PRIMARY selection)
* right-click (DOS environments, for example)
* shift+Insert (Common User Access)
* command-V (Apple)
* control-Y (Emacs)
* p (vi)

[edit] Additional differences between moving and copying

In a spreadsheet, moving (cut and paste) need not equate to copying (copy and paste) and then deleting the original: when moving, references to the moved cells may move accordingly.

[edit] Comparison to verb-object paradigm

As of 2007, the cut-and-paste paradigm has become so universal that most computer-users may take it for granted. As an instructive comparison, there follows an example of a competing paradigm, popular in some early, highly-successful applications known for ease-of-use by the standards of their day:

1. Initially, the user has not selected any text
2. The user initiates the operation by selecting a move command in some manner
3. The system displays a prompt such as "Move what?"
4. The system enters a modal state in which the user can either select text or cancel the move-operation
5. The user selects the text in some manner
6. The system displays a prompt "To where?"
7. The system enters a modal state in which the user can either indicate an insertion-point or cancel the move-operation
8. The user indicates the insertion-point and confirms the move-operation
9. The system displays the effects of the move

[edit] Multiple clipboards

Several GUI editors allow copying text into or pasting text from specific clipboards, typically using a special keystroke-sequence to specify a particular clipboard-number.

Similarly, a kill ring provides a LIFO stack used for cut-and-paste operations as an advanced type of clipboard capable of storing multiple pieces of data.[2] For example, the Emacs text-editor developed by Richard Stallman provides a kill ring.[3] Each time a user performs a cut or copy operation, the system adds the affected text to the ring. The user can then access the contents of a specific (relatively numbered) buffer in the ring when performing a subsequent paste-operation. One can also give kill-buffers individual names, thus providing another form of multiple-clipboard functionality.

[edit] References

1. ^ Resume of Larry Tesler
2. ^ GKB (Generic Knowledge Base) Editor user's manual
3. ^ GNU Emacs manual

[edit] See also

* Control key
* Copy and paste programming
* Photomontage
* Clipboard

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut%2C_copy%2C_and_paste"

Categories: Articles with sections needing expansion | User i

Answer 2

Wikipedia (pronunciation Spoken content fabric icon) is a unfastened,[5] multilingual encyclopedia undertaking operated by using the non-earnings Wikimedia beginning place, presently containing 2,605,644 articles in English. Its call is a portmanteau of the words wiki (a technologies for transforming into collaborative web pages) and encyclopedia. Wikipedia's 10 million articles have been written collaboratively by using volunteers around the globe, and practically all of its articles might nicely be edited by using all people who can get right of entry to the Wikipedia internet site.[6] released in 2001 by using Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger,[7] it fairly is presently the main important and maximum commonplace[a million] conventional reference artwork on the cyber web.[8][9][10]

Answer 3

yes, very much so, for several reasons: 1. they are too lazy to think on their own. 2. they enjoy the negative attention of all the thumbs down. 3. you have to scroll down miles of page to get to the following answers and 4. 99% of the time, their answer has nothing at all to do with the question.

Answer 4

i agree...and why don't they just read and then summarize it so we don't have to read all the way down!or don't paste at all...what a waste of time. one of the reason we put our question here is to know what other people have to say about the issue, i don't ask them to look the wikipedia for me! i can do it myself!

Answer 5

I don't like scrolling down through any long answer. Often the cut-and-paste answers don't really address the question either.

Answer 6

is sense it tell you how easy someone get find your answer just google also mean the questioner need to spend sometime research and just heavy depend on average joe.

Answer 7

They are following Yahoo!'s orders.
An answer must be an ANSWER!!
Frivolity is FORBIDDEN!!!

Answer 8

It bothers me, but it bothers me more when people do that without giving credit to the source.

: )

Answer 9

lol..yes..I just prefer the link not the whole post

Answer 10

yes! I'd rather have the link

Answer 11

it's annoying. if you want an answer from Wiki you can find it yourself.