copy/paste

[MikeMcDermott]

One of the first things I've tried to do with prime is to copy part of an equation with the right mouse button. As far as I can tell, you have to use cntrl-c to do this, but it's not as easy. Shouldn't all software allow you to copy using the mouse?

[Ninetrees]

I agree. OTOH, I frequently ride with one hand on the mouse and the other over the ctrl-x,c,v key combo, just so that I can do this. I find the r-click, select Copy, go somewhere, [select paste over if appropriate], r-click, select Paste...to be bulky. In fact, in my text editor I have installed keyboard macros to do all that so that my hands don't have to leave the kbd.

On a brighter note, in the past I have noted that we could not

a) hightlight something and ENTER new something that overwrote it, and now we can in both text and math. +3

b) hightlight something and PASTE new something that overwrote it, and now we can in both text and math. +3

I really use those a lot.

~R~

[MikeArmstrong]

Highlight the region and right click copy and then paste. It works, I do not see the issue.

Mike

[Ninetrees]

Not sure I understand your reply. In my post, I said "and now we can in both text and math. +3", trying to show how much this feature is worth in productivity...???

~R~

[MikeMcDermott]

It sure doesn't work for me. When I RMB the highlighting goes away. To get it to work must require some special skill that I do not possess.

[MikeMcDermott]

OK I found that if I'm on the MATH tab, I can go up there and select copy after highlighting something. This is not available when in another tab of the ribbon. I was looking for a dropdown menu for copy like every other application on the planet. OK maybe not every application. I can't do it in this text box, for example. I can't even do cntl-c and cntrl-v here!

[Ninetrees]

I guess that we all have different habits. In Mathcad, for example, if I have an expression, say, m:=1 kg. I can d-click on any of the parts [m, 1, kg], highlighting it, then either type in a new value for that part of the expression OR r-click and paste.

What I can't do --- and usually don't try to do --- is d-click in a math region and r-click to get options to copy or paste.

But because I usually use ctrl-x,c,v for all those ops, I am happy that M'3 has at last the use of those keys.

The current "on the MATH tab, I can go up there and select copy after highlighting something. This is not available when in another tab of the ribbon." function is virtually useless to me because it involves more mouse movement, and that takes time, AND, as mentioned, is only available from the Math menu,

In earlier M' versions, we had to hightlight, then delete the highlighted area, then paste or type in new material. This is much faster, and is fundamental for me.

~R~

[RichardJ]

A late reply, because I've been out at a conference all week.

I can't do it in this text box, for example. I can't even do cntl-c and cntrl-v here!

In a text box? Copy and paste works fine for me in a text box. I can even copy text and paste it into Word.

That's more than I can say for math. That still pastes into Word as what I assume is a copy of the underlying XML, which is utterly useless. And I don't know how Rich managed to highlight some math and paste something to replace it, beacuse I can't. I just copied the sin from sin(x) and tried to paste it by highlighting cos in another expression and then pasting, using either Ctrl V or the ribbon. No luck.

Edit: I have just realized I can highlight the x in cos(x) and replace it with sin using paste, but the same is not true for the cos. A bug I guess. I'll report it.

And that brings me to the new ability to copy and paste a graph as a graphic. The only option is to paste as a low resolution bitmap! I don't know about anyone else, but a bitmap is next to useless to me. I could use it in a Powerpoint presentation, but that's all. Even that's a stretch, because a bitmap can't be modified or edited except in the most rudimentary way. Not only is it effectively impossible to edit a bitmap, they are big, and make any document they are in big (a problem that just gets worse if they made them higher resolution). The low quality of a bitmap also makes it totally inadequate as a publication quality graphic.

To me, all of these copy and paste problems are really unacceptable. Copy and paste is one of the most basic operations in any Windows program, and it needs to be fully supported. What we have now might be slightly better than Prime 2.0, but it is still woefully inadequate.

[Ninetrees]

I don't know about image copying...I just copied a 2D plot by outlining the plot w the mouse and and using two different methods to copy the plot.

In both instances I got high quality plots, but they were both bitmaps. One way I got images of 921x414@72dpi, and twice I got images that were 624x280@72dpi. But no metafile, and they don't look as nice as what I get from M15.

~R~

[RichardJ]

72dpi looks good on the screen, which is why I said it's OK for a Powerpoint presentation. It doesn't look so good when printed though.

[Ninetrees]

Ah...good point...I didn't think to try printing...perhaps later...

[RichardJ]

You don't need to try. There's a reason that printers have been higher resolution than 72dpi since well before 1990.

[Ninetrees]

You're right about sin and cos. I just had not happened to try them...odd that they just don't seem to work...I wonder if it is because MP wants to interpret the paste as a var to begin with, and then doesn't want to past that into a function...? It seems that any function cannot be pasted into any function that is highlighted, whereas vars can be.

~R~

[RichardJ]

My guess is that the paste only works if there is a placeholder associated with what you are replacing. Since a function name doesn't have an associated placeholder (if you delete it you just get nothing) the paste doesn't work. I've reported it as a bug.