[Libreoffice-ux-advise] [Bug 138786] PS formatting gets lost, if you paste text into an new document with same name of PS, but different settings (see comment 5)

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.documentfoundation.org]

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=138786

--- Comment #8 from Mike Kaganski <mikekaganski at hotmail.com> ---
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #6)
> We can
> a) silently apply the target style (current situation)
> b) silently copy/rename of source style ("Caption_1", for example)
> c) show a dialog to resolve the conflict 

(In reply to Dieter from comment #7)
> So in the case you paste text from another document I would at least expect
> a message like: "You paste content from another document. Copied style
> formatting will be overwritten by styles with the same name." OK | Cancel |
> Don't show message again (Of course you can use a better English)

There are three actual cases usability-wise:

1. The user pastes as plain text - i.e., the current Ctrl+Alt+Shift+V behavior;
2. The user would want the pasted rich text to follow the styling of target
document (i.e., the same-name styles get the meaning they have in the target
document; absent styles are added; direct formatting is applied as in the
source) - i.e., the current Ctrl+V behavior;
3. The user wants the pasted text to look as it looked in the source. This is
what this issue is about.

The #3 indeed must *not* be implemented by modifying the existing styles
(because that would re-format existing text); and I would tell that renaming
styles would also be poor, because it would proliferate automatically generated
styles - consider a document, into which you copy some text from other source
many times - will it generate new style_1, style_2, ... style_N each time?

The reasonable implementation of "keep source formatting" paste option would be
to use the target styles, *but* additionally apply direct formatting atop, to
override any formatting in the target document which does not match what was in
the source. The "I want the text to look the same as in the source" case is a
clear sign of unstructured approach (at least locally), and DF is IMO
absolutely fine.

And IMO, some improvement of the paste process would be nice. A dialog is a
no-go; but we already have a drop-down paste toolbar button; and we could try
to implement more convenience tools - see e.g. how MS Word does that, by
displaying a floating toolbar on paste, with buttons allowing to change the
formatting of the pasted text *retroactively*. I don't suggest to copy that
approach, but I suppose that some improvement is possible without intrusive
(blocking) UI (which is a dialog).

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