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

#1

Post by unbroken » Thu, May 12, 2022, 5:10 PM UTC

I don't know if you have noticed that if you copy+paste into email pages/apps like outlook and gmail they bring over all the formatting and styling of the source. That is, it pastes the text in with things like the font color and background color, and the font type itself, which then become the styling for the rest of the email if you keep typing as well.

Who came up with this? It makes absolutely no sense that anyone would want to transplant styling/formatting into an email, where there is no guarantee (indeed, little chance) that it will mesh well. It's just baffling.

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

#2

Post by xcambar » Thu, May 12, 2022, 5:14 PM UTC

Many users, and maybe most outside HN, either:

* don't care about the misformatting

* actually want the red font and underlining from the web page they're copying from.

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

#3

Post by luxeo223 » Thu, May 12, 2022, 5:15 PM UTC

Ctrl-Shift-V pastes without formatting in most applications

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

#4

Post by Someone1234 » Thu, May 12, 2022, 5:21 PM UTC

luxeo223 wrote: post #3

Ctrl-Shift-V pastes without formatting in most applications

Not most applications, a handful of applications. The receiving application itself has to implement it as custom logic.

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

#5

Post by groffee » Thu, May 12, 2022, 5:22 PM UTC

Just paste it into notepad/gedit/plain text editor first, then recopy it from there.

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

#6

Post by knoebber » Thu, May 12, 2022, 5:27 PM UTC

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

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

#7

Post by tlb » Thu, May 12, 2022, 5:31 PM UTC

luxeo223 wrote: post #3

Ctrl-Shift-V pastes without formatting in most applications

Command-option-shift-V in Safari. A real finger-twister.

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

#8

Post by luxeo223 » Thu, May 12, 2022, 5:33 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #4

luxeo223 wrote: post #3

Ctrl-Shift-V pastes without formatting in most applications

Not most applications, a handful of applications. The receiving application itself has to implement it as custom logic.

Wouldn’t most applications that support rich text input inherit it from the browser, the underlying framework for native apps and/or be implementing styling themselves already (i.e. code editors)? I’m trying to enumerate applications that I use and I’m struggling to come up with more than Google Sheets, where paste without formatting is a drop-down menu instead.

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

#9

Post by tablespoon » Thu, May 12, 2022, 5:34 PM UTC

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.

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

#10

Post by yubiox » Thu, May 12, 2022, 5:35 PM UTC

I keep a terminal with vim open, almost every time I copy I paste there and recopy. So stupid and annoying.