Editing Cut, copy, and paste (section)

==History==
===Origins===
The term "cut and paste" comes from the traditional practice in manuscript editing, whereby people cut paragraphs from a page with [[scissors]] and [[Adhesive|paste]] them onto another page. This practice remained standard into the 1980s. Stationery stores sold "editing scissors" with blades long enough to cut an 8½"-wide page. The advent of [[photocopier]]s made the practice easier and more flexible.

The act of copying or transferring text from one part of a computer-based document ("[[Data buffer|buffer]]") to a different location within the same or different computer-based document was a part of the earliest on-line computer editors. As soon as computer data entry moved from punch-cards to online files (in the mid/late 1960s) there were "commands" for accomplishing this operation. This mechanism was often used to transfer frequently-used commands or text snippets from additional buffers into the document, as was the case with the [[QED (text editor)|QED]] text editor.<ref name="communications1967">{{citation|doi=10.1145/363848.363863|last1=Deutsch|first1=L. Peter|author-link1=L. Peter Deutsch|last2=Lampson|first2=Butler W.|author-link2=Butler Lampson|title=An online editor|journal=Communications of the ACM|volume=10|issue=12|year=1967|pages=793–799, 803|s2cid=18441825|url=http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/blampson/04-OnlineEditor/04-OnlineEditor.htm<!-- http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=363848.363863&coll=ACM&dl=ACM&CFID=15669714&CFTOKEN=68334085 -->|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130526060402/http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/blampson/04-OnlineEditor/04-OnlineEditor.htm|archive-date=2013-05-26|doi-access=free}}, p. 793.</ref>

===Early methods===
The earliest editors (designed for [[teleprinter]] terminals) provided [[computer keyboard|keyboard]] commands to delineate a contiguous region of text, then delete or move it. Since moving a region of text requires first removing it from its initial location and then inserting it into its new location, various schemes had to be invented to allow for this multi-step process to be specified by the user. Often this was done with a "move" command, but some text editors required that the text be first put into some temporary location for later retrieval/placement. In 1983, the [[Apple Lisa]] became the first text editing system to call that temporary location "the clipboard".

Earlier control schemes such as [[NLS (computer system)|NLS]] used a [[word order|verb—object]] command structure, where the command name was provided first and the object to be copied or moved was second. The inversion from verb—object to object—verb on which copy and paste are based, where the user selects the object to be operated before initiating the operation, was an innovation crucial for the success of the desktop metaphor as it allowed copy and move operations based on [[direct manipulation]].<ref>{{cite book|chapter=Metaphors create theories for users|author=Kuhn, Werner|title=Spatial Information Theory a Theoretical Basis for GIS|series=Lecture Notes in Computer Science|pages=366–376|year=1993|volume=716|publisher=Springer|doi=10.1007/3-540-57207-4_24|isbn=978-3-540-57207-7}}</ref>

===Popularization===
Inspired by early line and character editors, such as [[Pentti Kanerva|Pentti Kanerva's]] TV-Edit,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Moggridge |first=Bill |url=https://www.worldcat.org/title/ocm70167858 |title=Designing interactions |date=2007 |publisher=MIT Press |isbn=978-0-262-13474-3 |location=Cambridge, Mass |oclc=ocm70167858}}</ref> that broke a move or copy operation into two steps—between which the user could invoke a preparatory action such as navigation—[[Larry Tesler|Lawrence G. "Larry" Tesler]] proposed the names "cut" and "copy" for the first step and "paste" for the second step. Beginning in 1974, he and colleagues at [[Xerox]] [[PARC (company)|PARC]] implemented several text editors that used cut/copy-and-paste commands to move and copy text.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.designinginteractions.com/ |title=Bill Moggridge, Designing Interactions, MIT Press 2007, pp. 63–68 |publisher=Designinginteractions.com |access-date=2011-11-25 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111117051822/http://www.designinginteractions.com/ |archive-date=2011-11-17 }}</ref>

[[Apple Computer]] popularized this paradigm with its [[Apple Lisa|Lisa]] (1983) and [[Apple Macintosh|Macintosh]] (1984) operating systems and applications. The functions were mapped to key combinations using the {{Key press|[[Command key|Command]]}} key as a special [[modifier key|modifier]], which is held down while also pressing {{keypress|X}} for cut, {{keypress|C}} for copy, or {{keypress|V}} for paste. These few [[keyboard shortcuts]] allow the user to perform all the basic editing operations, and the keys are clustered at the left end of the bottom row of the standard [[QWERTY]] keyboard.

These are the standard shortcuts:
* [[Substitute character#Other uses|Control-Z]] (or {{keypress|Command|Z}}) to [[undo]]
* [[Control-X]] (or {{keypress|Command|X}}) to cut
* [[Control-C]] (or {{keypress|Command|C}}) to copy
* [[Control-V]] (or {{keypress|Command|V}}) to paste

The [[IBM Common User Access]] (CUA) standard also uses combinations of the [[Insert key|Insert]], [[Del key|Del]], [[Shift key|Shift]] and [[Control key]]s. Early versions of [[Microsoft Windows|Windows]] used the IBM standard. [[Microsoft]] later also adopted the Apple key combinations with the introduction of [[Microsoft Windows|Windows]], using the [[control key]] as [[modifier key]]. For users migrating to Windows from [[DOS]] this was a big change as DOS users used the "[[COPY (DOS command)|COPY]]" and "[[MOVE (DOS command)|MOVE]]" commands.

Similar patterns of key combinations, later borrowed by others, are widely available in most GUI applications.

The original cut, copy, and paste workflow, as implemented at PARC, utilizes a unique workflow: With two windows on the same screen, the user could use the mouse to pick a point at which to make an insertion in one window (or a segment of text to replace). Then, by holding shift and selecting the copy source elsewhere on the same screen, the copy would be made as soon as the shift was released. Similarly, holding shift and control would copy and cut (delete) the source. This workflow requires many fewer keystrokes/mouse clicks than the current multi-step workflows, and did not require an explicit copy buffer. It was dropped, one presumes, because the original Apple and IBM GUIs were not high enough density to permit multiple windows, as were the PARC machines, and so multiple simultaneous windows were rarely used.