GIMP: Paste as New Layer

Most people use Edit>Paste, Layer>To new layer, so, with the standard shortcuts, have trained their fingers for Ctrl-V, Ctrl-Shift-N. This because when there is a "floating selection" (which is what happens with Edit>Paste), Layer>New layer becomes Layer>To new layer and inherits its shortcut.

To answer some more of the question. Edit>Paste pastes the clipboard centered on the current selection (so if you just did a Ctrl-C in Gimp, the pasted bit is exactly over its source location), which is why you see it when zoomed in. By contrast Edit>Paste as>New layer pastes in the top left corner.

Also, no way to do what you want with a script or plugin, these are not allowed to interact with the UI, so they couldn't tell how much you are zoomed in or what are the coordinates of the part that you actually see.

I don't know of a way to configure this in GIMP - chances are there doesn't exist one. However, I can think of a workaround: In the menu under Edit->Keyboard Shortcuts, you can assign your own shortcuts to various GIMP functions (I'm assuming you already know this, but I'm writing for the general public here).

If you search for "New Layer", a shortcut by the name layers-new should pop up. This is the shortcut that will convert a floating selection to a new layer. So my suggestion is to revert to using the standard paste functionality, and simply assign a convenient shortcut to the layers-new command (something like Ctrl-B is pretty good, so you can quickly hit Ctrl-V and Ctrl-B in succession).

This is of course far from ideal, but I still think it's quite a solid workaround since you'll only lose one keystroke per paste operation.