create intuitive bindings for copy and paste

[midichef]

After all this time with Visidata, I still can't keep straight in my head all the variations of y/gy/gzy/zp etc. In the past, we've talked about trimming these commands to a manageable subset.

Instead, maybe we could keep the commands, but make them more intuitive and memorable. I'd like to suggest some ideas, to open up the possibilities.

Here's one idea, make y and p a vim-style "operator-pending" command, that takes a second letter to decide what shape to apply the yank/paste to. This is a prototype to test out in .visidatarc: y or p is applied to a shape that suggests the shape of the sheet elements it is applied to: . for cell, - for row, | for column:

Sheet.bindkey('y',  None)
Sheet.bindkey('p',  None)
vd.allPrefixes += ['y', 'p']
                                          #Existing binding
Sheet.bindkey('y.',  'copy-cell')         # zy
Sheet.bindkey('y-',  'copy-row')          #  y
Sheet.bindkey('ys-', 'copy-selected')     # gy        # selected rows
Sheet.bindkey('ys|', 'copy-cells')        #gzy        # selected cells in current column
Sheet.bindkey('p.',  'paste-cell')        # zp
Sheet.bindkey('p,',  'paste-after')       #  p        #maybe p- or p_ instead?
Sheet.bindkey('p',  'paste-before')      #  P
## the paste equivalent of 'ys-' does not exist; b/c there is no gp command, perhaps it would be:
## Sheet.bindkey('ps-', 'paste-selected') #none  
Sheet.bindkey('ps|', 'setcol-clipboard')  #gzp        # selected cells in current column

The syscopy- and syspaste- equivalents could use the prefixes Y or P, perhaps. Or gy and gp.

Some other ideas:

## letter based mnemonics
yc     copy-cell
yr     copy-row
ys     copy-selected
yC     copy-cells

## motion based mnemonics
yh/yl  copy-cell
yy     copy-row     (maybe also yj/yk)
ys     copy-selected
y|     copy-cells   (maybe also y, )

[frosencrantz]

I don't use copy and paste in VisiData very often. There are multiple variations, and I'm unclear on them all. I use some tricks to print to the screen and copy and paste using the terminal/OS builtin copy with some help from tabulate. It would be helpful to make these easier to use.

This is a reasonable proposal. Y for yank, and P for paste/put are familiar Vim mnemonics. (TIL yank in Emacs is to paste). I think I like the initial proposal with the visual characters for Cell/Row/Column ./-/|, I feel I could learn that faster, and easy to figure out when I forget.

This does add some new prefixes. Adding prefixes should be done with some caution, since there are only so many, and they also prevent using those as single character commands. There is a clear logic to to your proposal that makes this seems like an acceptable expansion.

@midichef thank you for the proposal, I like it. I wouldn't mind seeing more discussion on this.