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matsb99251617
Inspiring
August 22, 2023
Question

"Paste as text" expected behaviour?

  • August 22, 2023
  • 3 replies
  • 462 views

Greetings,

I changed the maker.ini file some time ago to paste as plain text as first priority. Works fine when pasting from external sources and is a great feature when working with Microsoft Office or other sources.

However, I noted that when pasting from the active FM document it picks up the paragraph and character formats. Now, it may be that I have just not noted this behaviour before (or that I'm really absent-minded) - can anyone confirm that it is expected?

Best regards,

Mats

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    3 replies

    Barb Binder
    Community Expert
    Barb BinderCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    August 23, 2023

    Hi Mats:

     

    When I want to paste unformatted text from one section of FrameMaker to another, I use Paste as Unicode Text. It will not carry in the character styles, and the text will adapt whatever paragraph style I paste into.

     

    My disclaimer is that I figured this out on my own, and this technique may make the Unicode experts on this forum shudder. I'm talking to you, @Bob_Niland, the man who knows more about Unicode than I ever will. (Probably you do too, Klaus.)

     

    Anyway, that works for me, and I will continue until someone tells me not to. 😝 Which could be any minute.

     

    ~Barb

    ~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training
      Bob_Niland
      Community Expert
      Bob_NilandCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      August 23, 2023

      Paste Special as: Text or Unicode Text strips all formatting, much as copy to Notepad first would do.

      I've never really dived into what the difference is betwen those two pastes. Just playing with it a bit, they are different. It's very tricky to test, as the current font needs to populate any codepoints used, and you need to be sure that all codepoints are below U+FFFF, because U+10000 and up won't work at all in any version of FM to date. Fails may look uninformatively like [?] or [??].

      My guess is that "Text" would be anything supported by FM7 and below — whether FM's own character set then, or Windows CP1252, would take some testing. Paste as Unicode Text may have have arrived with FM8, with both forms being needed then due to document back-crossing.

        Barb Binder
        Community Expert
        Barb BinderCommunity Expert
        Community Expert
        August 23, 2023

        Thanks, @Bob_Niland.

         

        ~Barb

        ~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training
        Jeff_Coatsworth
        Community Expert
        Jeff_CoatsworthCommunity Expert
        Community Expert
        August 22, 2023

        Yes, it's always worked that way - in those cases, you still have to use the Paste Special - plain text choice.

          K.Daube
          Community Expert
          K.DaubeCommunity Expert
          Community Expert
          August 22, 2023

          As far as I know FM internally uses  a different clipboard. Hence I use since years a special utility TextHelper.

           

          Edit

          See   What is the kill-buffer? 

            W
            Community Expert
            Winfried RengCommunity Expert
            Community Expert
            August 23, 2023

            I also use another utility to paste text only: PureText

            http://stevemiller.net/puretext/

            Very handy also in other applications than FrameMaker, when you want to paste without formatting. E.g. in Outlook or Excel.

            Microsoft has the PowerToys collection of utilities. There is also one that pastes text without formatting.

            https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/

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