Open Radar

 
Summary:

The Cocoa text system provides a rich collection of key combinations used by NeXT and other Un*x developers for millennia. Some key (no pun intended) shortcuts are those used to cut, copy and otherwise manipulate text.

One of the most basic is ^k : kill to end of line and place killed text in a paste buffer.

A correspondingly useful one is ^y : yank from the aforementioned buffer and paste at the current insertion point.

All standard Cocoa text editors support this by default. Xcode 8.3.3 and earlier support this. Xcode 9 seems to support ^k in that the text disappears from the insertion point to the end of the line, but ^y then fails to insert the killed text. It’s not clear whether the failure is in ^k or ^y or if there is some more existential mismatch between the new Xcode 9 editor and the Cocoa text system.

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Desire to cut a line of text and move it a few lines down
2. Brain stem types ^k ^n ^n ^y before the frontal cortex even realises what’s happening
3. Frontal cortex is confused about why it’s desire has not been realised, and worse that the text it wanted to move is no longer there

Expected Results:

The frontal cortex does not wish to be confused.

Actual Results:

The frontal cortex sighs a deep sigh and wishes for a simpler time when text editing took place on a screen that glowed a pleasant orange glow in darkened rooms, where the reverent hush was only occasionally broken by the clatter of a teletype machine.

Regression:

Works in all earlier version of Xcode, Project Builder, TextEdit, Bash & Emacs.

Notes:

I am sure there will be other key combos that will cause intense stress for my frontal cortex. I look forward to creating further radars.