[TextShare] - proposal to make a desktop-wide format for text

[Liam R E Quin]

On Tue, 2008-06-17 at 22:33 +0200, François Revol wrote:

> Maybe it should instead be xml-based, using formats, but that would 
> only work inside OOo itself, so...

Unless the XML-based format was widely supported...

> > So if formatted text cut & pasted text is generalized:
> > 1. it must be de-activable desktop-wide
agreed.

I think in fact there may be 3 separate things:
(1) paste as plain text
(2) paste with structure (e.g. keep superscripts)
(3) paste with full formatting.
Sometimes there are more application-specific things that make sense,
such as whether to copy the text from an SVG illustration or to copy
the whole illstration.

> > 2. it must not move plain text cut and paste to some other shortcut
> +1.

I'm proposing only to make a standard format for interchange, not to
change shortcuts.

Right now if you try and paste formatted text from OpenOffice to
abiword (say) and back again, the formatting often changes in subtle
ways.  If you paste from scribus to gedit, you end up looking at
pointy brackets... and so on.

We need to make things "just work" wherever possible.  Of course,
"wherever possible" may well mean having the two kinds of paste, just
as (say) MS Office does today.

Best,

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/
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