Re: Proposed fix for #8001 RFC

Robert Staudinger wrote:

>On 5/30/05, Roland Kay <roland.kay@ox.compsoc.net> wrote:
>
>
>>
>>
>>Thanks for your input guys.
>>
>>I think one of the problems with this is the expected
>>behaviour rather depends upon the user's experience. A naive
>>new user will see text in one document and expect that when
>>pasted into another it will look the same, as Rob says. They
>>will get upset if it doesn't and report it as a bug.
>>
>>In contrast, an experienced user, who understands the power
>>of styles and has gone to the trouble of setting up a
>>complete style sheet for his/her documents, may get equally
>>upset when the pasted content doesn't respect the style
>>sheet of the target document. For example, abi currently
>>has an option to disable formatting tools. I assume this is
>>so the user can be sure not to accidentally add in any
>>non-stylesheet formatting. However, with the former
>>approach copying and pasting can still insert this type of
>>formating info.
>>
>>Might it make some sense to add some options to the
>>Preferences dialog so that the user could choose the
>>behaviour they want? Yet more work, but it offers the
>>possibility of keeping experts and novices happy.
>>
>>
>
>Now i see your point more clearly. If bad comes to worse we can make a
>"Paste as" dialog, like other word processors do. About the preference
>i'm not 100% sure because even during a single editing session the
>desired paste mode can be different.
>
>Cheers,
>- Rob
>
>
>
I understand and use styles, but I also assume that text will look the
same when I copy and paste it. I think what probably should be correct
(but might be non-trivial) is that instead of copying the style
definitions, the pasted text has the particular font, spacing, whatever
applied just on that text, without redefining the style. That way, if
someone doesn't use the Styles feature to format their text, they get
the expected "looks the same" result. Then, if someone does want it to
all match, all they have to do is select the text and re-apply their
"Normal" style (as I tried to do several times before it sunk in that
when I copied and pasted, I lost my "Normal" style).

Hope this helps.

Ryan
Received on Tue May 31 03:41:05 2005