alt Hacker NewsThe problem with Undo reverting the clipboard state is that Undo is usually file or app-local, but the clipboard is shared. You can cut from app A, switch to app B, cut something else from app B, then go back to app A and undo the cut.
“Ghost cut” can work across apps with reasonable undo support by not using the clipboard at all and some form of IPC instead. For example, when you cut from app B before resolving the cut from app A, app A could be notified to cancel its cut.
I think this is much less intuitive than the current convention though.
Replies
0gs • today at 5:55 PM
wow OS-level undo would be a way cooler solution to this problem
> You can cut from app A, switch to app B, cut something else from app B, then go back to app A and undo the cut.
...right, thanks. So you could still make it work but you'd definitely need OS support, it's not something one app can fix.
Edit: You could make this work on an app level by checking if the contents of the user's clipboard is still the value they cut. If yes, revert to whatever clipboard contents you saved prior to the cut. Otherwise do nothing.
It's probably too much hidden behavior to be a good idea, but I think it would match what the user wants in 99% of cases.