Originally Posted by
Gord_in_Toronto
Can anyone give me a hint as to why this is done? Is it to hide the failings of the writer of the software? Or just to annoy its users?
Basically laziness on the part of the coders. And not unreasonable laziness in all cases. Most underlying form frameworks have a concept of "labels" and "edit boxes". Edit boxes support full editing and cut and paste etc. Label's are display only and don't support cut and paste. The programmer would have to go out of their way to make labels support cut and paste and most don't.
It's basically something that wasn't thought out well 20 years ago.