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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?

#111

Post by CharlesW »

tablespoon wrote: post #9
knoebber wrote: post #6

I sometimes copy paste things into the browser URL bar to strip formatting

Me too. Copy-pasting with formatting is almost always what I don't want. It's even more of a disaster on a Mac, because the handling is MS Office is much worse than on Windows, and Outlook has about three total settings on its preference screen, so there's no way (I can tell) to change the default behavior.

> …there's no way (I can tell) to change the default behavior.

If you're willing to try a menubar app: https://apps.apple.com/app/id1611378436

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

#112

Post by Steltek »

ineedasername wrote: post #36

>It makes absolutely no sense that anyone would want to transplant styling/formatting into an email I do it all the time when I need to email a small table from excel instead of attaching the whole sheet, especially when it's backed by data that should never be sent in an email. It works fine. I used to not be able to do this. Content didn't paste nicely, or recipient clients didn't display it nicely. These days it's…

This highlights my true desire: I want to copy structure, not specific font choices. Or in other words, I want the HTML tags but not the CSS.

Rich paste annoys me most when the content I paste has a different notion of what plain paragraph words should look like. And "ctrl-shift-v" isn't helpful if you're trying to paste in a list or something.

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

#113

Post by kazinator »

> Who decided copy+paste should copy styling/formatting?

I would say, 1980s integrated office appllications for the Macintosh, like ClarisWorks.

> It makes absolutely no sense that anyone would want to transplant styling/formatting into an email

It absolutely makes a ton of sense: often you want to copy text containing bullets, bolding, italics, underlining and ... oh: tables?

There are times when you don't want the formatting, like for instance when you just want to quote some passage of text, without quoting its 24 point font.

It is essential to have a command to paste without formatting. You need it both ways.

In 2022, can't you get an e-mail program whose editor has paste with and without formatting?

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

#114

Post by wintermutestwin »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #49
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...

On Mac you can do shift+option+command+v to paste with formatting removed.

Thanks so much for this - I can't imagine how much time I have wasted jumping through goofy hoops trying to change the formatting in gmail.

If only there was a way to set this as the default and format pasting as the shift setting.

FWIW, shift+command+v works for me...

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

#116

Post by linuxdaemon »

bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #72
linuxdaemon wrote: post #46

It seems most of my posts here end up being a complaint about MS Teams. So here is another. Teams will happily take the formatting of "black text" from copying from Word for example. But anyone who is using a dark theme on Teams now can't read it because it "intelligently" kept the formatting that didn't even matter because it was just "plain back text". Had it been copied from something that didn't specify that form…

Does making the background in Word white and not just "default" fix this?

It would make sense that it would if the formatting was specified (though MS rarely makes much sense). I can't test this myself. I only have access to word online, and (unless I'm blind) there is no way to specify background on a text/paragraph in the online version.

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

#118

Post by wintermutestwin »

InitialLastName wrote: post #37
moralestapia wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the vast majority of users want to paste with formatting Oh, I highly doubt this is the case.

If you're moving sections around in a spreadsheet or a word processor, would it be more annoying if the copy/paste kept the formatting or stripped the formatting?

In a spreadsheet or word processor, you have Paste Special which allows you to be granular about what formatting, etc comes over with the paste.

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

#120

Post by Foivos »

kennywinker wrote: post #98
tbrock wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you just need to add shift, option is not necessary.

Option was required in every app I've ever tried this in... do you somehow have different keybindings than me?

Maybe it is related to the language of the keyboard.
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