> I'll do weird stuff like copy text to Notepad to remove formatting then past it back into the same app/web page to enter information.
I do that too! In fact, I do that so often that on Windows, I have the following workflow in my muscle memory:
CTRL+C ;; copy
Win+R ;; open "Run"
CTRL+V ;; paste
CTRL+A ;; select what I just pasted
CTRL+X ;; cut it out (disappearing text serves
;; as a visual proof of operation completion)
ESC ;; close the "Run" box, restoring focus
;; to original application
CTRL+V ;; paste cleaned-up text
I do that without thinking in under 2 seconds.
On Linux, I usually abuse the address bar of the browser.
I used to always have to do this as well (I work in graphic design and oftentimes I have to paste text from Word/PowerPoint into my layout/design apps -- it's a nightmare)
Then I discovered this handy little utility, PureText:
Wow sounds like a nightmare! Although I certainly have many muscle-memory-scripted tasks that I run like that :) On OSX command-shift-v is paste-without-formatting and seems to be fairly universal - I guess there's not a Windows equivalent? I thought that I recalled ctrl-shift-v working in most contexts on Linux to remove formatting as well but I've been using OSX for too long now and don't remember.
Same shortcut is convention in Windows, but it takes only one program you use regularly to not respect that to make you learn an alternative workflow, and then stick to it everywhere.
I also use the web browser for this, it's extremely efficient:
CMD+A,C,T,V,A,X,W,V
I don't even release the CMD key between presses and it's all done with one hand extremely quickly. I've often wondered if Chrome collects usage statistics on this and what it looks like from their perspective. "This user opens a lot of tabs, pastes stuff in the address bar, then gives up before the new tab page is even done loading."
I think software designers underestimate how powerful this sort of muscle memory is. Even if something isn't technically one action away, if you can get to it with a sequence of actions you can perform consistently right after each other, you quickly start to think of that sequence as "one action".
This is one reason why old-school, keyboard-shortcut-driven UI can feel so good to use (and why animations that block interaction are so frustrating).
I worked on a Windows Mobile (on the huge ruggedized devices) they were really slow, but the people who used them knew the screens so well, that they wouldn’t wait on the screen to refresh to navigate the screens and start typing. They would just take advantage of the keyboard buffering. I mistakenly changed the order of one field on the screen and it threw off all of the data entry. We could not reproduce the “bug” but we knew we shouldn’t be getting that many mistakes from the same people who were doing everything correctly. We actually sent the QA guy out in the field and he discovered the issue within an hour - the users weren’t looking at the screens, they were doing everything from muscle memory.
And which is why I abandoned both Windows and Linux for using Emacs as my OS :).
No, seriously. I try to port all my workflow to Emacs, because with all the power and consistency of that keyboard-driven platform, I can finally put my muscle memory to use.
Beyond that, I finally developed a habit of automating annoyances away. Today, if I do something frequently and find it annoying, I fix it with a script. Be it elisp (Emacs), CL (Linux - I use StumpWM as my WM), or AutoHotkey (Windows).
--
Actually, some random recent examples:
- I frequently deal with Lisp code that outputs large structured or semistructured blobs of text; at some point I decided I need a quick way to pipe such output to a separate Emacs buffer: https://gist.github.com/TeMPOraL/8715c9dd9837e0b601d1cdce059....
- At my previous workplace, I found myself pasting some strings to various communications channels quickly. Since I already used AutoHotkey to remap Caps Lock to CTRL, this is what I came with (and later expanded): https://gist.github.com/TeMPOraL/d330edccf8ba9a2b13d01b4e7f1....
The point of giving those examples, beyond obviously showing off :), is that this is what IMO good software enables. Improving your life on the fly, one simple binding or one simple script at a time. Scripting isn't only for shell commands. It's definitely useful for UI experience as well. I regret it took me that long to figure this out.
This is also why I try to port as much of my workflow as I can to Emacs. It's because Emacs makes such modifications seem trivial. If you need something to interoperate more, you can glue it with together with a little bit of Elisp. If you need something new, you can probably add it with a little bit of Elisp in no time. Emacs, being a runtime-modifiable, introspectable and tremendously well documented system with a decent REPL, makes this quick and relatively painless.
> On Linux, I usually abuse the address bar of the browser.
Same here. I used to disable “search suggestions” so I wouldn’t be sending all of that stuff to Google but at the same time search suggestions can actually be useful sometimes so now I have it enabled anyway, meaning that I send a lot of random stuff to Google.
However mostly it’s no big deal. The primary reason that I disabled search suggestions was that I used to type out the passwords for new accounts in the address bar first and copy them and then paste them twice into the password and confirm password fields respectively. Since then I’ve written a pass-phrase generator command line program that I named pgen [1] which I use instead, so because I no longer use the address bar for passwords there is rarely anything sensitive that I am typing.
If a website has password requirements that are incompatible with the passwords generated by pgen I have the terminal I just ran pgen in open already anyways so I paste back into it and modify the password to suit the requirements.
Ctrl-Alt-V for Office and its ilk. My tip is to always set to paste without formatting by default, and use the shortcut when you want to paste with formatting, because the fancy format you want is usually pre-selected on the menu, but the plain text format never is.
I use the Option+Shift+Command+V all the time, especially in emails - that text that I copied from SAP or a Word doc invariably has bizarre formatting and if I Command+V paste it into my email, now the rest of what I type after it is going to be screwed up. A four button shortcut sounds like a pain, but once you use it two or three times it comes pretty naturally. Similar to Command+Control+Shift+4 for setting up a screenshot that will grab straight to clipboard, it's easier than it sounds when doing it on the regular.
Yeah - seems like it would be one of those things that you could allow the user to configure and they'd set it once and never again. I suppose you could switch your client to plaintext composition, but would be nice if there was a setting like you describe "don't change formatting after pasting" and/or "always strip formatting when pasting".
A fast way to work around apps that can't strip formatting on paste: command+spacebar (open spotlight search), command-v (paste), command-a (select all), command-x (cut).
Maybe I'm pointing out the obvious for you guys here but most browsers have a "paste as plain-text" option. In Chrome it's CTRL+SHIFT+V and you can see it if you right click in an input field as well.
My Firefox doesn't show such option under right-click menu. But even if it's common in other browsers now, it wasn't when I needed it first, so I found an alternative and put the problem out of my mind. Thanks for pointing out that there is a solution in (some) browsers, though. Maybe it's time to abandon the alternative habits.
Setting up a shortcut to "paste as plain text" is a handy secondary capability. Being able to see/select your last n copied items is very helpful indeed. (Ctrl-Alt-H is my shortcut, and whenever I'm on a system that doesn't have it installed I become sad when that shortcut doesn't work...)
And if your browser is configured to use a predictive search engine you've just sent the contents of your clipboard to Google or Microsoft (or other search provider).
Doesn't that just bring up a dialog box where you have to search through the radial buttons for "Paste Without Formatting", select it with the mouse, and hit "Ok"?
An obscure keyboard shortcut (vs 4-5 common ones), finding your option, and switching to the mouse doesn't seem like a better solution. Plus it's not universal.
I do that too! In fact, I do that so often that on Windows, I have the following workflow in my muscle memory:
I do that without thinking in under 2 seconds.On Linux, I usually abuse the address bar of the browser.