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

Plain text copy/paste should be the default and crtl+shift+v to include formatting

Yeah right. If you just want the obvious basic functionality, you just need to do extra steps!

When people ask me why I like my CLI and TUI apps so much this is the example I give. It's much less likely that some UI/UX person has been involved and this means the the workflow will be logical and oriented to the task at hand.

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 their head and type into the cells because formulas are too difficult for them to master.

Unfortunately if you do so it will break Cmd-V paste on applications that don't have that feature.

At least two people want to paste with formatting:

https://www.alfredforum.com/topic/17398-clipboard-history-fe...

I've seen this question asked again and again. Once, i saw an answer from someone who was a product manager on a big office tool, i think at Microsoft. Their answer was that according to their user research, the vast majority of users want to paste with formatting.

Given how often this comes up, and how irritating all programmers evidently find this, i would really love to read a detailed writeup of this feature; its history, how popular it really is, how people use it, etc. It seems likely there's a big story here we're all completely missing.