Alice Averlong🏳️⚧️
foone@digipres.club
it's been 31 years since windows 95 and I'm still annoyed that they implemented the copy-cut-paste metaphor for files but they got it wrong
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Alice Averlong🏳️⚧️
foone@digipres.clubopen text files A, B, C:
type "foobar" into A:
copy foobar, paste it into B, C:
it appears in both
cut it from A, paste it into B & C, it appears in both.
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Alice Averlong🏳️⚧️
foone@digipres.clubcreate folders A, B, C, create file "foobar" in folder "A"
copy it from A
paste it into B & C
it appears in B & C
cut it from A
paste it into B
paste it into C
it only appears in B
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Alice Averlong🏳️⚧️
foone@digipres.clubcopy "foobar" from file A
delete it from file A
paste it into file B
it appears in file B
copy foobar from folder A
delete it from folder A
paste it into folder B
windows says "whoops can't find that file"
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Alice Averlong🏳️⚧️
foone@digipres.clubwindows refused to actually commit to the clipboard metaphor for files, it just stuck a copy/cut/paste metaphor on top of an existing DOS-style file manipulation system
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Alice Averlong🏳️⚧️
foone@digipres.clubthe problem is that windows doesn't actually implement copy/cut/paste using files. it instead implements copy/cut/paste on top of file paths. this makes it not work the same as the actual clipboard
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@foone that's right, it goes in the recycle bin
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Alice Averlong🏳️⚧️
foone@digipres.cluband don't get me started on the fact that the actual windows clipboard is bullshit and chips. it was implemented in windows 3.1 so it doesn't actually hold the contents of what you copy, it instead holds a pointer to which application can generate the contents of the clipboard.
you can tell this if the program that's got the clipboard contents has hung, because you can't paste shit
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@foone Alice starts posting something about a 30 year old operating system. You know you’re about to find out about some of the most cursed shit.
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Alice Averlong🏳️⚧️
foone@digipres.clubthis does also lead to some weirdness with things like images. when you copy an image, what's on the clipboard? a PNG? a bitmap? a jpeg?
Yes. All of them at once. The program you're pasting into gets to pick which one it's going to ask for
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Alice Averlong🏳️⚧️
foone@digipres.clubthis is also why you can copy text out of firefox and paste it into word and it'll show up as rich text, but if you paste it into notepad, it'll be plain text
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Alice Averlong🏳️⚧️
foone@digipres.clubfor bonus points: open notepad, type "hello world", copy it, then close notepad.
then paste that text into something else.
does it work?
if so, HOW?
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Cassandrich
dalias@hachyderm.io@foone Because Windows lacks hardlinks and the st_nlink concept (holding a referene on a file that's been unlinked) that would be needed to do this right. And refuses to fix that because they hate POSIX.
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@foone EVERYTHING, ALL OF IT, EVERY BYTE OF CODE.
THAT WE CALL THEM BYTES IS A BED ROCK OF CURSED BULLSHIT THAT THIS ENTIRE EDIFICE IS BUILT ON.
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✧✦Catherine✦✧
whitequark@treehouse.systems@foone x11 is like that too, which makes using a clipboard manager mandatory
interestingly, wayland is not far off
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Alice Averlong🏳️⚧️
foone@digipres.clubMSDN, btw, has a warning that really really doesn't inspire confidence in the OS:
SECURITY NOTE: The clipboard should not be used to transfer sensitive data.
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/Cinny 
Alice Averlong🏳️⚧️
foone@digipres.clubthe "how it works" involves not using delayed rendering, and using GlobalAlloc with the GMEM_MOVEABLE flag to create your clipboard contents, so that windows can free your clipboard contents even after your application has closed.
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@foone They had to do that this way because the computer mice at the time didn't have enough memory to store the contents ;-)
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Alice Averlong🏳️⚧️
foone@digipres.club@deshipu it's actually one of my longterm stupid goals to build a clipboard mouse where you can copy text and it'll be stored in the mouse, then you can unplug it, plug it into another computer, then paste it into the other computer
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@foone @charlotte I think that a key part we’re missing here is how scuffed the office suite is. You can select an entire visio diagram, copy it and then just paste it into a word doc without any issue
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