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Ask HN: Who decided copy+paste should copy styling/formatting?

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Re: Ask HN: Who decided copy+paste should copy styling/formatting?

#101

Post by WalterGR »

eoghann wrote: post #25

I just imagined trying to explain to my non-techy colleagues how to get the pasted "stuff" to look like the copied "stuff" and that pretty much answered the question... Everything about Windows and Microsoft office is annoying to someone who knows how to use a computer properly; unfortunately, the vast majority of people using them do not. I work with people who use Excel every day and will still do the maths in thei…

> Everything about Windows and Microsoft office is annoying to someone who knows how to use a computer properly; unfortunately, the vast majority of people using them do not.

A perfectly acceptable way of using a computer properly is getting one’s task done with the least amount of hassle.

Since MacOS and, to some extent, iOS copy formatting as well, there seems to be some agreement that it’s the behavior that leads to less hassle for the l^Huser.

Re: Ask HN: Who decided copy+paste should copy styling/formatting?

#102

Post by soheil »

bombledmonk wrote: post #16

In many, but not all programs on windows you can paste plain text by using ctrl+shift+v. Outlook desktop is one of the few places where this hotkey does not work. Before I knew there was a native hotkey combo, I created a autohotkey script that would do that and had a mini-tutorial that showed how. https://forum.digikey.com/t/add-a-digi-key-search-hotkey-eve...

Any way is to paste inside a non-textrich area like the browser address bar and then immediately copy the content again to get rid of the styling.

Re: Ask HN: Who decided copy+paste should copy styling/formatting?

#103

Post by kelnos »

I think this makes perfect sense, but I agree it can be annoying. I wouldn't want a copy-paste operation to be lossy by default. If I were copying a table or something like that, I would almost certainly want that formatting preserved at the destination.

To me, the real problem is that when you don't want to bring formatting along, it's not obvious how to do that, and it's not implemented universally. Fix that, and I don't think there'd be as much to complain about.

Re: Ask HN: Who decided copy+paste should copy styling/formatting?

#104

Post by jhot »

soheil wrote: post #102
bombledmonk wrote: post #16

In many, but not all programs on windows you can paste plain text by using ctrl+shift+v. Outlook desktop is one of the few places where this hotkey does not work. Before I knew there was a native hotkey combo, I created a autohotkey script that would do that and had a mini-tutorial that showed how. https://forum.digikey.com/t/add-a-digi-key-search-hotkey-eve...

Any way is to paste inside a non-textrich area like the browser address bar and then immediately copy the content again to get rid of the styling.

I do this all the time. Cmd+tab into browser, cmd+t, cmd+v, cmd+a, cmd+c, cmd+w, cmd+tab to where I need to paste, cmd+v

But now that I've seen you can add shift to remove formatting, I'll have to try to remember to do that instead.

Re: Ask HN: Who decided copy+paste should copy styling/formatting?

#105

Post by pupppet »

Willamin wrote: post #90
pupppet wrote: post #43

It's tough because you don't want the formatting...until you. If I'm editing text that has a few bolded words I'd be immediately annoyed if the pasted text didn't have the bolded instances.

Great point! I'd then suggest that formatting that always conveys meaning (bold, italics, etc) should be copy/pasted. On the other hand, formatting that often doesn't convey meaning (font face, foreground color, background color, shadows, etc) should not be copied by default. A three-way option to system-wide (and per application) configure the behavior for control/command + x/c/v would be nice: * smart copy/paste (w…

Yep totally agree. The number of times I've pasted into a WYSIWYG editor and discovered a mess of nested divs that came along for the ride...

Re: Ask HN: Who decided copy+paste should copy styling/formatting?

#109

Post by tablespoon »

ghusto wrote: post #38

This! I thought I was going insane, that nobody has mentioned this until now. "When did this start happening?", I thought. But looking into it, it seemed as if it had always been like this -- only of course it hadn't! It is mind crushingly annoying, second in nerve-o-smashing only to useless mouse over popups all over a UI. "Here, let me just smack a popup over what you're reading because there's now about 0.2cm of t…

> This! I thought I was going insane, that nobody has mentioned this until now. "When did this start happening?", I thought. But looking into it, it seemed as if it had always been like this -- only of course it hadn't!

I feel like this worked sensibly until maybe 5 years ago.

Re: Ask HN: Who decided copy+paste should copy styling/formatting?

#110

Post by jstummbillig »

If you have rarely worked with average people in any non-tech-producing-but-software-using sector, I can see how this might be confusing.

If you have, the answer becomes crystal clear, very quickly: A staggering amount of information gets passed around by people copying random websites into word documents and just needing them to make visual sense without additional effort, because if that was not the case productivity would absolutely plummet, over people fighting to format documents back into readability (or maybe they would just go right back to screenshotting or gasp prints).

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