Copy HTML-formatted text

Copy HTML-formatted text

A very simple request: Opera should be able to copy text with HTML-encoded formatting intact, as other browsers do. I realize that this has been requested many times, but I'm asking for it again. My reasons are:

• I need it for my research work: I have a bibliography manager that can copy data on books and articles from Web pages and create bibliographical records from them, if the information is HTML-formatted. Why should I have to go to IE to do this?
• We are grown-ups out here. I realize that there is some security risk in copying HTML formatting, but I should be allowed to accept that risk to meet specific needs. If it is made an option that I can select through the Preferences dialogue, that will protect those who need protecting, and enable others to do necessary work in Opera.
• It is (checking my watch now) 10 years into the 21^st century. Rigidly mandating plain-text-only copying leaves Opera stuck in the past, and helps keep it on the fringes of the browser world, instead of in the center, where it belongs.

Thanks for listening. If my reasons reflect some kind of misunderstanding, someone please help me understand better!

Item, "Copy with formatting" = Go to page, "javascript:void(document.designMode='on')" & Delay, 300 & Copy & Delay, 300 & Go to page, "javascript:void(document.designMode='off')"

Sorry for my ignorance, I don't know how to use the code you posted.

This could be pasted in a custom menu.ini, or you could use the macro in a button or keyboard shortcut.

For buttons, use http://nontroppo.org/tools/buttonmaker/

The macro part being

Go to page, "javascript:void(document.designMode='on')" & Delay, 300 & Copy & Delay, 300 & Go to page, "javascript:void(document.designMode='off')"

OK, thanks, I created a button with the macro. When I tried it out, it copied text that I had previously selected to the clipboard. However, it did not seem to copy any formatting (font changes, bold, italic, etc.), just plain text. Maybe this is because I'm still in Opera 9.64.

Sorry to be a bit dense, this is my first time doing anything like this in Opera.

You could try it manually.

If you put this in the addressbar

javascript:void(document.designMode='on')

then you should be able to edit text, copy it with formatting, etc.

If the error console shows an error then you'll have to upgrade to at least Opera 10.0x to use the button correctly.

http://www.opera.com/docs/specs/presto22/ says Presto 2.2 supports it though, which I think is what 9.6x uses?

Very interesting. When I do this, I can edit text on a Web page (which feels amazingly cool); but it still won't copy formatting. According to http://www.opera.com/docs/specs/, Opera v. 9.6x supports Presto 2.1.1. Maybe that's the problem. I'll have to upgrade to v. 10 and see if it works then.

A follow-up: The HTML 5 document referred to by both the Presto 2.1.1 and the most recent Presto 2.5 pages describes a number of user actions to be implemented when a document or a portion of it is made editable: http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html#user-editing-actions (warning: this is a massive document, and takes ages to download, at least on my machine). It is noteworthy that these do not include anything about copying HTML formatting. I get the impression that Opera is unalterably opposed to such copying, for whatever reason.

So, one more question, Frenzie: using designMode, do you find that you are able to copy HTML-formatted text with the formatting intact? For instance, can you copy such text and paste it into a Word document with fonts, italics, etc., intact?

What you actually want is to get RTF data onto the clipboard, not HTML. But Opera doesn't support that currently either.

The Opera devs rarely comment on whether and when features may or may not be included. You are far from the first person to request this, and Opera have at no point I've seen said they are opposed to it, they're just as silent on it as they almost always are about new and requested features. No matter what happens with Opera there always seems to be a queue of feature requests that have gathered momentum for some time (CSS rounded corners was one of the biggest filled by Opera 10.5.) This is just the nature of development when you don't have an Infinite amount of monkeys and keyboards producing the software equivalent of Shakesphere. The best you can do is keep an eye on the Desktop Team blog and see if one of the snapshots there makes your day; or try and get a job at Opera and influence things from the inside.

Originally posted by DavidR:

A very simple request: Opera should be able to copy text with HTML-encoded formatting intact, as other browsers do. I realize that this has been requested many times, but I'm asking for it again. My reasons are:

• I need it for my research work: I have a bibliography manager that can copy data on books and articles from Web pages and create bibliographical records from them, if the information is HTML-formatted. Why should I have to go to IE to do this?
• We are grown-ups out here. I realize that there is some security risk in copying HTML formatting, but I should be allowed to accept that risk to meet specific needs. If it is made an option that I can select through the Preferences dialogue, that will protect those who need protecting, and enable others to do necessary work in Opera.
• It is (checking my watch now) 10 years into the 21^st century. Rigidly mandating plain-text-only copying leaves Opera stuck in the past, and helps keep it on the fringes of the browser world, instead of in the center, where it belongs.

Thanks for listening. If my reasons reflect some kind of misunderstanding, someone please help me understand better!

+1. I also use IE a lot for this task...

Originally posted by BtEO:

What you actually want is to get RTF data onto the clipboard, not HTML. But Opera doesn't support that currently either.

The Opera devs rarely comment on whether and when features may or may not be included. You are far from the first person to request this, and Opera have at no point I've seen said they are opposed to it, they're just as silent on it as they almost always are about new and requested features. No matter what happens with Opera there always seems to be a queue of feature requests that have gathered momentum for some time (CSS rounded corners was one of the biggest filled by Opera 10.5.) This is just the nature of development when you don't have an Infinite amount of monkeys and keyboards producing the software equivalent of Shakesphere. The best you can do is keep an eye on the Desktop Team blog and see if one of the snapshots there makes your day; or try and get a job at Opera and influence things from the inside.

Sorry, been away for a couple of days. The specific program I want to copy text for actually requires HTML-formatted copying; the fonts and so on were just the quickest thing I could think of to test formatted copying of any kind.

I use other "non-standard" software too, and I understand that developers who don't have Bill Gates behind them have to do triage on what gets added. (And I understand the reasons for not making specific promises.) But I also know that, as you say, this specific feature has been requested by many people for a long time. Really I was just adding my voice to the outcry. I also tried to supply something of a rationale in the hope that that might be helpful. Maybe one of these days we'll get lucky.

Originally posted by DavidR:

So, one more question, Frenzie: using designMode, do you find that you are able to copy HTML-formatted text with the formatting intact? For instance, can you copy such text and paste it into a Word document with ]fonts, italics, etc., intact?

Precisely. Or at least in OpenOffice.org Writer. That's what it did for me in 10.0x, and does for me in 10.10 and 10.5x.

OK, thanks! I'll definitely have to give this a try in Opera 10.

+10

I know some IE versions can copy HTML formatting natively, and I routinely use the IE5 Power Tweaks in my IE6 to do the same task.

Everybody tells me Opera is a complete internet suite -- so when do we get this feature?

Gordon.

+1, but only if it only copies the markup (tables, bullet-points, paragraphs, ...) and not the style associated with it, too (as IE does)

Even copying without styles is enough for me. Most important are tables, bullets, bold, italics and so on. It's rare case when you need absolutely all formatting.
Since opera can copy formatting in design mode it must be extremely easy to implement rich copying out of the box. Only copying of images (not urls) needs to be added

+1 Please, please

It actually haves. I don't remember how to do it, but I used it once to copy a site from the very apple.com to my blog Click here to see the entry

This will be awesome! Add this to M2 too.
I have IE just for do that...

+1 to this too. It would be great if you could choose whether or not to copy formatting by adding a right click option.

Originally posted by s-a-s-h:

Since opera can copy formatting in design mode it must be extremely easy to implement rich copying out of the box. Only copying of images (not urls) needs to be added

I use the "Copy with format" (same as the one Frenzie posted) Button with 10.61 and it copies images too. Not background (style) images but plain IMG tag images. The styling apart from the font-family and the colors is copied to, H's and A's remain H's and A's at least if I copy them to MS-Office ...

+1