Merge formatting when pasting external link from clipboard

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Simon Dismore
Posts: 454
Joined: Thu Nov 16, 2006 1:29 pm
Location: London, UK

Merge formatting when pasting external link from clipboard

Unread post by Simon Dismore »

Recent releases have added support for pasting web content from the clipboard into the editor. For example, using this example (from Wikipedia's Antimatter article)...
In particle physics, antimatter is material composed of antiparticles
...if I highlight 'particle physics' and <Ctrl><C> <Ctrl><V> it to Help & Manual, it will be inserted as hyperlinked text. That's great, except that the paste bring across unwanted formatting including font names and sizes that don't work with my layout. That is, it currently behaves like the 'Keep Source Formatting' command does when pasting into Word and Outlook.

In most situations I'd prefer something similar to Microsoft's 'Merge Formatting' command so that my paragraph format is applied, as if I had pasted 'particle physics' as plain text and then hyperlinked the external address using <Alt><l><Alt><i><Alt><a><Ctrl><V><Enter>. My main request is to make this an optional way of pasting, achievable using a custom key combination.

Possible fallbacks for the most obvious edge cases:
  • If not all the content is linked (e.g. in 'material composed of antiparticles', only the last word is a link) ideally H&M would link the same as the source (i.e. material composed of antiparticles). Second best it would link the entire content (i.e. material composed of antiparticles). Third best it wouldn't link anything (i.e. material composed of antiparticles).
  • If the content contains more than one link (in the example, both 'particle physics' and 'antiparticles' are linked) ideally H&M would link each phrase individually the same as the source (i.e. In particle physics, antimatter is material composed of antiparticles). Second best it wouldn't link anything (i.e. In particle physics, antimatter is material composed of antiparticles).
If implementing this is easy, thanks for considering it. Otherwise of course please don't delay the new release for it, thanks.
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Tim Green
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Re: Merge formatting when pasting external link from clipboa

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Simon,

That would definitely be useful!
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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