[Libreoffice-ux-advise] [Bug 148544] Option to remove all whitespace in "Paste special" and other dialogs

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.documentfoundation.org]

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=148544

--- Comment #6 from ady <adylo811517 at gmail.com> ---
(In reply to V Stuart Foote from comment #5)
> (In reply to Eyal Rozenberg from comment #4)
> > Why is it a common use case to want to remove all whitespace, as opposed to
> > trimming the heading and trailing white space? Convince me please...

FWIW...

If the request is to remove absolutely _all_ whitespace, then there is no need
to change anything; we can already do that by several methods.

If the request is to remove _repeated_ whitespace characters (e.g. reduce
multiple consecutive spaces to one), we can also do that by several methods.

> 
> For the most part, when white space is included it is not desired--it

Sorry but… is there any source for such claimed statistic? Some use-cases might
require that behavior, and others do not.

> represents ill-considered formatting and bloats the strings being
> copy/pasted.  That includes enclosing as well as included text runs of
> spaces.

Users could also mark the undesired character as separator in the import
dialogue and also check Merge delimiters. After that, concatenate the resulting
columns, if needed. That also eliminates _all_ whitespaces.


> 
> Ability to suppress the paste of the unhelpful space runs, as opposed to
> having to do repeated find/replace sequences, is appealing.

There is no need to do "repeating" find/replace sequences. Select the relevant
area, and replace _all_, current selection only, searching for 2 consecutive
spaces (or whatever you want to replace) and replacing with only one (or none,
or whatever). Perhaps there is some case/need to repeat the action in some
particular case, but then using regular expressions in the "Find and Replace"
could help in this regard too.

If all the current alternatives are not enough, let's not forget that Calc is
not a text editor.

Many relevant requests for additional options in several different areas in
Calc have been rejected just to "avoid clutter" (and I disagree with that
reasoning). This time we have a request that has enough alternative solutions
already.

> 
> Toggle is sufficient, but I would suggest suppression of white space should
> be the default.

Having the requested option set to ON by default would be a terrible idea.
Users then would ask why the import is now resulting in a different display
content than the content of their original (CSV) file, especially if they had
done the same import in the past. If you add an option for some particular
(advance) case, then (advance) users should take responsibility for acting on
such option. At most, you could make the option to be remembered within the
session after the user sets it to ON, but changing the current default behavior
with no good reason is bad practice.

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