[ih] cut and paste

[Jack Haverty]

TECO, circa 1970, had a notion of "QRegisters", which were places you 
could put some text and later insert it into your document elsewhere.  
TECO used single-letter commands, which you could string together to 
perform complex actions. See http://tenex.opost.com/anhc-31-4-anec.pdf

E.G., "hxa" would put the entire contents of your file into QRegister 
"a"; the "h" is shorthand for "0,z" which specifies everything from 
character0 through the last character (z).   The "x" is the actual 
command top copy text into the specified QRegister. The command "ga" 
would "get" the contents of QRegister "a" and insert it into your text 
at the current cursor location.

So, "cut and paste" were in use in 1970 and probably earlier.   I don't 
recall the terms "cut and paste" being used, and the TECO commands were 
not ^C et al, but it's the same function.   Emacs came later, written as 
a set of TECO macros and commonly loaded into the "e" QRegister - hence 
"E Macros".

Jack Haverty


On 8/7/23 15:15, Michael Thomas via Internet-history wrote:
>
> On 8/7/23 2:30 PM, Dave Crocker via Internet-history wrote:
>> There has been a spate of FB postings, reminding folk that Larry 
>> Tesler created cut and paste.
>>
>> My confusion is that I'd swear Tenex (and maybe Top-10 and maybe one 
>> or another system at MIT) had ctl-C and ctl-V and probably ctl-X in 
>> the earliest 1970s, if not earlier.  References to Tesler's 
>> innovation say it was at Parc.
>>
> I have always assumed it was from Parc since the Mac used it as a 
> basis. Maybe they mean the graphical way by holding the mouse key down 
> and creating a range. Holding the mouse key down was sort of the 
> equivalent of C-Space for setting a mark in emacs. But emacs certainly 
> wasn't the only text editor, so maybe some other editor back in the 
> day used the C-C, C-X and C-V convention.
>
> Mike
>