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- rasko40
In human-computer interaction, cut and paste or copy and paste is a user interface paradigm for transferring text, data, files or objects from a source to a destination. Most ubiquitous is the ability to cut and paste sections of plain text. This paradigm is closely associated with graphical user interfaces that use pointing devices.
The term cut and paste derives from the traditional practice in manuscript editing in which paragraphs were literally cut from a page with scissors and physically pasted onto another page. This was standard practice as late as the 1960s. Editing scissors with blades long enough to cut an 8-1/2"-wide page were available at stationery stores. The advent of photocopiers made the practice easier and more flexible.
The cut-and-paste paradigm was widely popularized by Apple in the Lisa (1981) and Macintosh (1984) operating systems and applications. It was mapped to a key combination consisting of a special control key held down while typing the letters X (for cut), C (for copy), and V (for paste). These key combinations were later adopted by Microsoft in Windows. Common User Architecture (in Windows and OS/2) also uses combinations of the Insert, Del, Shift and Control keys. Some environments allow cutting and pasting with a computer mouse (by drag and drop, for example).
Contents
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1 Performing cut and pastes
2 Copy and paste
3 Comparison to verb-object paradigm
4 See also
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Performing cut and pastesCut and paste are very frequently performed operations. It is customary to provide several methods for performing them, such as a key combination, a pulldown menu, and a toolbar button.
The text to be moved is selected by some method, typically by dragging over the text with the pointing device.
A cut operation is performed by key combination, menu, or other means.
The visible effect of the cut is to remove the text immediately from its location.
Conceptually, the text has been moved to a location often called the clipboard. The clipboard is typically invisible. On most systems there is only one location in the clipboard, hence another cut operation overwrites the previously stored information. Multiple clipboard entries are provided by many UNIX text editors and some Windows clipboard manager programs that are available over the Internet.
A location for insertion is selected by some method, typically by clicking at the desired insertion point.
A paste operation is performed which visibly inserts the clipboard text at the insertion point.
The paste operation is nondestructive; the text remains in the clipboard and additional copies can be inserted at other points.
Whereas cut and paste is usually done with a mouse on Windows-like environment, it may also sometimes be done 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 cut and paste are provided, a nondestructive operation called copy is usually provided as well; copy places a copy of the selected text in the clipboard without removing it from its original location.
The clipboard is usually not displayed, because the operations of cutting and pasting, while actually independent, are usually performed in quick succession, and the user needs no assistance in understanding the operation or maintaining mental context.
Sometimes, if a section of text is cut and a different section of text is cut after it, the first section of text will be cut out of existence, with no way to retrieve it. This only applies to cut and paste programs that can only hold one thing on the clipboard. This is usually not a problem for clipboards that can hold multiple cuts.
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Copy and pasteCopy-and-paste refers to the popular, simple method of reproducing text or other data from a source to a destination, which is only different from cut and paste in that the original source text or data is not deleted or removed as it is with the latter process.
Copying can be performed on most graphical user interface systems using the key combinations Ctrl+C (used for killing the running process in UNIX and DOS environments) or Ctrl+Ins (the former being more widely supported), or by using some other method, such as a context menu or a toolbar button. Once data have been copied into the area of memory referred to as the clipboard, they can be pasted into a destination using the key combinations Ctrl+V or Shift+Insert, or methods dependent on the system. Macintosh computers use the key combinations Command+C and Command+V. In the X Window System, selecting text copies it to a clipboard, while middle-clicking pastes.
The popularity of this method stems from its simplicity and the ease with which data can be moved between various applications without resorting to permanent storage.