cut and paste

1 definition found

cut and paste - Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (26 May 2007) :

  copy and paste
  cut and paste
  paste
  
     <text> (Or "cut and paste", after the paper, scissors and glue
     method of document production) The system supported by most
     document editing applications (e.g. text editors) and most
     operating systems that allows you to select a part of the
     document and then save it in a temporary buffer (known
     variously as the "clipboard", "cut buffer", "kill ring").  A
     "copy" leaves the document unchanged whereas a "cut" deletes
     the selected part.
  
     A "paste" inserts the data from the clipboard at the current
     position in the document (usually replacing any currently
     selected data).  This may be done more than once, in more than
     one position and in different documents.
  
     More sophisticated operating systems support copy and paste
     of different data types between different applications,
     possibly with automatic format conversion, e.g from rich text
      to plain ASCII.
  
     GNU Emacs uses the terms "kill" instead of "cut" and "yank"
     instead of "paste" and data is stored in the "kill ring".
  
     [Origin?  Macintosh?  Xerox?]
  
     (1998-07-01)