Rich Text Paste is lost after another copy

[Roelof Berkepeis]

i use the ubuntu lucid version from it's repository, after adding it to my system : i found https://launchpad.net/~diodon-team/+archive/daily and i did "Adding this PPA to your system". I guess this should be the 0.3.1 version because (only) Synaptic says so .. : my Diodon lacks a version text, even in the Preferences dialog box header bar (eg. create "Diodon v0.n.m Preferences"!?).

When copy-pasting a rich text, all goes OK. But then, when i copy another text string, that previous (Rich Text) string has lost its Rich Text when pasting ..

That's all for now. Diodon seems to work properly. I wanted to switch to another clipboard manager while Parcellite, which i use for a long time now, has stopped working : it's eating all CPU time and so severely slows down the OS ..?! I could tell you about my experiences with other clipboard managers, but Diodon is working *rather* fine, so it seems .. :-)

[Oliver Sauder (sao)]

Thanks for reporting.

I could reproduce this bug in the current version 0.5.0.

Marking as confirmed.

[Oliver Sauder (sao)]

@Roelof Berkepeis
I'm currently trying to figure out how to implement this. Seems to be more difficult than anticipated ;).

Therefore I need to know what application you have used to reproduce the issue that rich text does not work?

[Roelof Berkepeis (roelof-imoma)]

i do not remember which app .. but it almost certainly was Open Office
(v3.2) for Ubuntu Lucid while i don't often do RT ..
However i just tried to reprocude the bug by copy / paste something in
between in GEdit, and then pasting from Diodon history is OK !?
I don't understand .. as i said, it was a while ago i discovered the
"bug" ..

i saw you also said /I could reproduce this bug in the current version
0.5.0./
?! (i use Diodon 3.1)

hope i can help ..
roelof

On 11/18/2011 09:17 PM, Oliver Sauder wrote:
> @Roelof Berkepeis
> I'm currently trying to figure out how to implement this. Seems to be more difficult than anticipated ;).
>
> Therefore I need to know what application you have used to reproduce the
> issue that rich text does not work?
>
> ** Changed in: diodon
> Status: Confirmed => In Progress
>
> ** Changed in: diodon
> Assignee: (unassigned) => Oliver Sauder (sao)
>

[Oliver Sauder (sao)]

Gedit uses only simple text therefore it works just fine.

I could reproduce the issue with LibreOffice. The question why I'm asking is whether you used a different application which might store RichText differently than OpenOffice/LibreOffice.

It seems that OpenOffice/LibreOffice copies the rich text as text/html and text/richtext. Suppose such will be supported by other applications supporting rich text as well.

[Oliver Sauder (sao)]

I have investigated this some more. LibreOffice is getting me some head ache right now ;). It seems that it sometimes stores the same formatted text in different html which than floods the history. (AbiWord seems to be more pleasant ;)).

Furthermore, I haven't I found a solution yet, how to present a rich text item to the user. For instance when the same text snippet is copied to the clipboard manager with different formatting, such will be impossible to tell apart in the indicator.

I will have to think about, how this can be solved best. However I have to postpone it for now.

Any ideas are welcome.

[Roelof Berkepeis (roelof-imoma)]

Hi Oliver,

On 12/03/2011 07:00 PM, Oliver Sauder wrote:
> I have investigated this some more.
>
> *** Nice! I guess it's always good to have some serious user feedback! I will help you if i can. I'm a programmer too, for web however ..
>
> LibreOffice is getting me some head ache right now ;). It seems that it sometimes stores the same formatted text in different html which than floods the history. (AbiWord seems to be more pleasant ;)).
>
> *** I'm only familiar with Open Office and AbiWord, but both apps I use not often and their internal "mechanism" to copy/paste are unknown to me ..
>
> Furthermore, I haven't found a solution yet, how to present a rich text item to the user. For instance when the same text snippet is copied to the clipboard manager with different formatting, such will be impossible to tell apart in the indicator.
>
> I will have to think about, how this can be solved best. However I have to postpone it for now.
>
> Any ideas are welcome.

>

> *** I'll give you a tip : look at ArsClip, http://www.joejoesoft.com/cms/showpage.php?cid=97 , this is such app for Windows .. i used it a lot when doing Windows .. i think it's the best freeware thing (i compared it with many others, being a free-app-gatherer these days) .. the programmer is still improving his ArsClip, making it compatible to Windows 7, 64-bit, etc .. He uses an icon in front of each copied item : the icon of the concerning app .. and he uses a (unlimited?..) tooltip in the history list so the user can see all (plain) text of the item which is sometimes very handy .. the download also contains a source code, but i guess it's not applicable to Linux ... HTP,

> have a nice day,
> roelof
>
>
>

> ** Changed in: diodon
> Milestone: 0.7.0 => None
>
> ** Changed in: diodon
> Status: In Progress => Confirmed
>
> ** Changed in: diodon
> Assignee: Oliver Sauder (sao) => (unassigned)
>

[Oliver Sauder (sao)]

Thanks for your ideas. I will take a look at ArsClip and see how those ideas work with Diodon.

Personally, I think the best solution would be that the text is shown formatted to the user as it has been copied . Currently there is pango (http://developer.gnome.org/pango/stable/PangoMarkupFormat.html) which can do that in the GtkMenuItem.
However pango has some limitation. Furthermore is it not supported yet in an application indicator (see Bug #522149). Currently, I also do not know how html can be converted to pango.

So an icon approach per application might be something in between just showing simple text and the formatted text. Will have to play around with this a bit to see if it really works.

[Roelof Berkepeis (roelof-imoma)]

On 12/04/2011 03:42 PM, Oliver Sauder wrote:
> Thanks for your ideas. I will take a look at ArsClip and see how those
> ideas work with Diodon.

yes, and you might just contact this programmer ..!? (i don't know ..
windows / linux)

> Personally, I think the best solution would be that the text is shown formatted to the user as it has been copied.

mmm ... i think this is a detail at the current stage : first solve the
problems concerning copy from any app to any app ..
And what about copy / paste items like spreadsheet rows/columns ? :: i
don't know their format but as many different items exist to copy/paste,
my idea should be to display only the pure text each item is holding &
an icon indicator will simply assist the user in choosing the concerning
one from their history list, that's all we want .. keep it simple but
complete.

> Currently there is pango (http://developer.gnome.org/pango/stable/PangoMarkupFormat.html) which can do that in the GtkMenuItem.
> However pango has some limitation. Furthermore is it not supported yet in an application indicator (see Bug #522149). Currently, I also do not know how html can be converted to pango.

I understand ...

> So an icon approach per application might be something in between just
> showing simple text and the formatted text. Will have to play around
> with this a bit to see if it really works.

yes, such icon is really handy !

-roelof

[Oliver Joos (oliver-joos)]

I confirm this bug for Diodon 0.8.0-0ubuntu0 on Linux Mint 13 (= Ubuntu 12.04) and LibreOffice Writer.

For me it would be ok if Diodon shows plain text in its menu. But older clipboard entries must keep their formatting! I'd like to use Diodon together with the personal wiki editor "Zim" which has some rich text capabilities. Therefore this bug is a show-stopper.

[Oliver Sauder (sao)]

Thanks for your feedback.

This issue resp. feature request is definitely on the target. However as each single application uses the clipboard differently this is not easy to overcome. We will see what we can do though.