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Unable to Copy/Paste between VMs with only Mouse. #3957

Open RefinedSoftwareLLC opened 6 years ago

RefinedSoftwareLLC commented 6 years ago

Qubes OS version:

Qubes release 4.0 (R4.0) I also used: $ sudo qubes-dom0-update --enablerepo=qubes-dom0-security-testing

Affected component(s):

All mouse users, users who have ever forgotten a key-command, users with accessibility needs, and especially new users (allowing QubesOS to be one step closer to being usable by the majority, the normal people which will never learn to use a terminal)

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

Expected behavior:

(Disclaimer, this is not about dom0, just normal VMs) Every program with copy/paste is expected to have the feature usable by only using the mouse. It is also expected that the menu allowing this mouse interaction also display the shortcut keys to copy/paste without the mouse. See how the browser you are using and even terminals follow both of these expectations. Because of Qubes VM nature, the Alt-Space Menu (Menu on the left of each VM's title bar) is the location new users should be able to find it. A second location is right clicking an VM in the System-Tray/Task-bar, which brings up the same Alt-Space Menu with a few items missing. For Example: "Copy Clipboard to Global Clipboard" (To keep from widening the menu, when hovering displays popup: Ctrl-Shift-C) "Paste Global Clipboard to Clipboard" (To keep from widening the menu, when hovering displays popup: Ctrl-Shift-V) If the added complexity would be worth it, a second icon/menu, immediately to the right of the Alt-Space Menu, could be used to hold Qubes OS features like this. Feel free to disable and gray out (but not hide) these two menu items in dom0 windows, if needed for security.

Actual behavior:

New users do not even know there is a Copy/Paste feature. Some of which will stop using Qubes OS out of frustration. Others will have to get an internet connection working, use google to find the Qubes Website, then read the FAQ.

General notes:

The majority of this issue is just trying to defend that this is a real UI/UX issue against Linux users/developers who are not the ones called (unpaid) when an average PC user can't do something as essential as Copy/Paste on their own.

Related issues:

1019 At least the FAQ should be available offline, updated at least as often as a v9.1 to 9.2 version bump.

marmarek commented 6 years ago

As for the actual feature - adding this action to window menu, the idea sounds good - it will allow to use mouse while still being unspoofable by the VM. Not sure how difficult it could be, but probably needs to be done separately for each window manager (xfce, kde, i3, awesome, ...).

As for documentation, I'd expect Ctrl-Shift-C/V being mentioned in getting started, but it is there only as part of config snippet. There is also a link to inter-vm file copy page, but not clipboard. @andrewdavidwong could you take a look at it? I'd expect that inter-vm file and clipboard is much more needed there than running applications in fullscreen...

andrewdavidwong commented 6 years ago

As for documentation, I'd expect Ctrl-Shift-C/V being mentioned in getting started, but it is there only as part of config snippet. There is also a link to inter-vm file copy page, but not clipboard. @andrewdavidwong could you take a look at it? I'd expect that inter-vm file and clipboard is much more needed there than running applications in fullscreen...

  1. I think we should be careful to distinguish the documentation issue from the GUI issue. If the documentation discussion goes beyond this comment, let's branch it off into a separate issue.

  2. I think the point @marmarek is making about documentation is different from the one @RefinedSoftwareLLC is making. There's a risk of talking past each other here. Although @RefinedSoftwareLLC explicitly mentioned offline documentation, I think the real underlying point is that the ability to perform inter-VM copy/paste operations with only the mouse is a feature that should be available and discoverable without users having to read the documentation (either intuitively discoverable in the interface or in information that's built into the OS à la #2211). In other words, the problem is not that the documentation is hard to find; it's that users shouldn't have to read the documentation at all for such basic functionality. (Having just the FAQ available from within the OS wouldn't have helped in this case, since inter-VM copy/paste isn't actually mentioned in the FAQ at all. The real issue is making the functionality or information available where the user already expects it.)

  3. I don't have any reason to believe that people reading the website are having trouble finding the inter-VM copy/paste documentation. It's located prominently under Common Tasks, and I haven't heard any complaints about not being able to find it or not knowing about the information it contains. The problem I have with adding the same information to Getting Started is that every time we duplicate documentation, it inevitably comes back to bite us when one place gets updated and the other doesn't. It ends up hurting users who fall into the trap of following the stale documentation through no fault of their own and makes the documentation harder to maintain because contributors submit PRs updating one place but not the other, also through no fault of their own. Therefore, I think a better approach in this case is to add a section to Getting Started that includes the relevant links under Common Tasks without duplicating the content on those pages.