copy/paste problem

[Little Girl]

Hey there,

rikona wrote:

>I ordered a new mouse but in the meantime I've done a couple of
>hundred moves using konq to konq. As I was doing them I noticed I
>didn't have a single failure. Worked fast, and every time. I then
>tried MANY from Nautilus to konq. All of these also worked fast and
>perfectly. I'm back to thinking it is a software problem, but will
>try the new mouse when it arrives. Any other thoughts on the
>software front? Liam had several good suggestions to think about.

It's interesting that you're not seeing the issue in
Konqueror-to-Konqueror and in Nautilus-to-Konqueror. Have you also
tried it again in Nautilus-to-Nautilus? I take it that's what you
were referring to when you said "2 'files' windows" in your original
post. I'd be curious to see if you can repeat the issue by repeating
the circumstances.

There are a lot of possibilities here:

It's possible that there was an issue previously that has been
resolved in some unknown way (software update, cache clearing, etc.)
and your system is now running fine.

It's possible that there's a bug in the Nautilus code that needs to be
sorted out.

It's possible that there's a Nautilus-to-Nautilus use case that the
Nautilus team hadn't thought of or thought out properly that needs to
be written or sorted out.

It's also possible that it's device-related. Whenever I see
inconsistent behavior, which is what you had initially described, I
look to hardware. There may be something about your device's design
that doesn't play nice with Nautilus-to-Nautilus moves, but works
fine in moves involving other software. For this to be likely,
though, the misbehavior would be consistent, and you're seeing
inconsistent behavior.

Last, but not least, it's possible that it's a combination of
hardware and software. Perhaps the hardware is occasionally failing
outright (as mice do when they start to wear out) and Nautilus isn't
as forgiving as Konqueror because of some conditional clause that was
written into the Konqueror code that's either missing in Nautilus, is
in a different order in Nautilus, or is written differently in
Nautilus and, therefore, triggers/doesn't trigger at the time of
failure, causing Nautilus to fall over while Konqueror stands strong.
Or perhaps there's something about the way your device behaves that
the developers didn't take into account when writing the software and
such a thing manifests only when the device begins to fail, which
happens intermittently.

The problem with intermittent issues is that they're hard to pin
down. If you get the new mouse and plug it in and it works perfectly
in every scenario above every time, you won't know for sure which of
the above scenarios (including ones not mentioned above) was the
culprit. If you get the new mouse and plug it in and it works
perfectly in every scenario above except for Nautilus-to-Nautilus
moves, you won't know which of the Nautilus-related possibilities
(including ones not mentioned above) are the culprit. Even
large-scale testing involving allegedly detailed control of
circumstance would be fraught with the possibility of human error and
misinterpretation. Computers are confounding and messy and glorious
at the same time.

Either way, it's lucky for you that the issue is with, or seems to
only be affecting, an inexpensive peripheral device. Best of all, it
looks like you've found a solution that's working reliably for you
now.

-- 
Little Girl

There is no spoon.