Re: Proposed fix for #8001 RFC

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.

> Agreed, but only where the styles already exist in the
> target document.

OK. That seems like a reasonable compromise. While it does
alter the style sheet, it doesn't do any permanent damage.

One thing I didn't manage to make clear in my previous
email, is that at the moment pasting messes up all of the
styles. For example, suppose "Heading 3" is defined differently
in the target and the source documents. Then copying and
pasting some "Normal" text will cause "Heading 3" in the
target document to be corrupted.

Thanks again for your suggestions.

R.
Received on Mon May 30 18:16:16 2005