Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Multimedia, OS, Software, Switchers, Features, Internet Tools
Wanted: The Ultimate Copy and Paste
This morning my wife had an emergency with copying and pasting. She works online with a bunch of PC users, all of whom naturally use the panoply of MS products: Word, Internet Explorer, and Windows. Her assignment was to copy and paste dozens of web clippings into a Word doc, complete with formatting and links intact. Sounds easy, right? The Clipboard is a miracle of modern computing. As usual, things were harder than we thought. In Windows, since MS makes the whole widget (or buys it from some other poor sap and tacks it into their stuff), the Windows clipboard pulls everything into it. The Mac implementation of this process breaks down between the browser and MS Word for Mac. Go figure.Copying from any and all browsers using a simple copy/paste didn't carry anything but text at the worst, formatting at best. There is, of course, Paste Special in Word. Unfortunately, you have to be able to copy RTF into the clipboard from the browser. The only browsers that will apparently pass RTF into the Mac clipboard? Safari (and Shiira, so I guess it's a webkit thing). This makes sense, as webkit is built by Apple, right? My wife's problem is that she doesn't like Safari. She uses Firefox. So my task is to find the perfect clipboard. iClip won't do it. Anyone know of anything better? Try copying some hyperlinked and formatted text out of Firefox and into Word. If the links carry over, we're in business, and I'm back in favor with the wife. Not that I'm out of favor, but I'm the guy that sold her on the whole Mac thing, and now her coworkers are giving her a hard time. I mean, copy and paste? We gotta fix this thing, she was close to getting some switchers!
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
tex said 6:41PM on 11-10-2005
to use safari for this little project would kill her?! comon. there is nothing wrong with safari. its completely stable and for this project it would work perfectly!
Reply
Bill said 6:48PM on 11-10-2005
You already found it... Safari. Tell her to use Safari for this project and Firefox for everything else. Seems a lot easier than some third party clipboard thingy. I prefer InDesign at work but sometimes I have to use Quark which in my opinion sucks compared to InDesign.. but I use the right tool for the job, and sometimes I don't like tool but I use it. She may even end up liking Safari in the end, it is rather nice.
Reply
anthony said 7:21PM on 11-10-2005
Yeah - you need to back that up with a better argument than "I don't like Safari".
Reply
John said 7:36PM on 11-10-2005
The problem here isn't MS Word, iClip, or any other multi-clipboard app. The problem is with Firefox itself. For some unknown reason, it only copies the plain text portion of text clippings, ignoring any formatting, links, etc. That's unfortunate because otherwise, it's a good browser.
Reply
EJ said 8:34PM on 11-10-2005
On a windows machine, I'm able to get anything copied from anywhere to anywhere whlie keeping the format, this includes firefox. But i have also had this problem on macs as well, with other software besides firefox as well.
Reply
AHM said 8:44PM on 11-10-2005
Looks like a gecko/clipboard bug to me. If you use Mozilla, internally it will copy and paste everything, but when you try to paste it into another app, it loses the tags. Interestingly, if you copy from Firefox and paste into Mozilla, the formatting is intact. So the clipboard format must not be properly formed such that it could be pasted as RTF (or HTML?). Dunno if this is also a problem in Windows. File a bug report...
Reply
Quentin Smith said 9:11PM on 11-10-2005
I went digging with Clipboard Viewer (comes with the Developer Tools). Here's the problem:
Copying text from Safari results in two main flavors: plain-text and RTF. The RTF includes hyperlinks in it, and the plan text obviously doesn't.
Copying text from Firefox results in three main flavors: plain-text, RTF, and HTML. The HTML includes hyperlinks, but the RTF is styled text without hyperlinks. The plain text obviously doesn't include style or hyperlinks.
My guess is that Word is preferring the RTF flavor over the HTML flavor, and since Firefox doesn't include hyperlinks in its RTF when you copy, you get the styled text but no hyperlinks.
So file a Firefox bug that it doesn't include hyperlinks in its RTF when you copy from it.
--Quentin
Reply
Michael said 2:16AM on 11-11-2005
Opera has the same problem. Still, yeah, Safari works fine. I don't see the problem -- Safari makes it just easy as usinig windows. Plus with paste special you have control over pasting output.
Reply
Sam Katz said 9:18AM on 11-11-2005
Tell her to use NVU as her "word processor" -- www.nvu.com. It's actually an HTML editor but who is the wiser?
Also, she is giving a bad view of Macs. If you use the default applications everything works fine. Which browsers did you test with. Did you test with Opera? There also has to be a way to paste special as HTML.
--Sam
Reply
Valkraider said 11:19AM on 11-11-2005
First, you should have her try Camino. It is a better browser than Firefox in my opinion, for the Mac anyway.
Unfortunately, neither it nor Firefox - not even the latest versions or nightlies - do what you want. And for that matter, neither does Opera 8.5.
You could also try OmniWeb - or look for a Firefox extension.
But I think you are just stuck with having her use Safari.
But to tell you the truth - Safari is a good browser. After she uses it a bit she might like it more...
All in all, if having to use Safari is the worst case scenerio - you are still ahead of the game...
Reply
gio_pio said 2:58AM on 11-11-2005
As was mentioned above, Firefox is the problem. But there is a way around it. In Firefox, she needs to save as "Web Page, complete." Then open the resulting .html file in TextEdit -- she'll get something she can grab web clippings from (be sure the New Document preference is set to RTF). Just copy and paste the stuff you need from TextEdit to Word. It's an extra step, but it will get her what she needs.
Reply
Spaceman said 7:02AM on 11-11-2005
What about Webstractor?
http://www.softchaos.com/products/webstractor/overview/
I know that's not a clipboard utility, but sounds perfect for your wife's project.
Reply
Beck said 8:29PM on 11-11-2005
View the page source, and copy and paste the HTML
Reply
Don Wilson said 8:57PM on 11-11-2005
"or buys it from some other poor sap and tacks it into their stuff"
Just like Apple did with Konfabulator? Oh wait...
Reply
Victor Agreda, Jr. said 9:48PM on 11-11-2005
UPDATE: She's going to use Safari, but only for this task. Due to compatibility issues, she HAS to use Firefox. Even then, she sometimes has to drop into IE 5. If only programmers weren't so lazy.
Also, any extra steps won't work because she's got hundreds of these to do within a short time frame.
Don, this one's for you :)
http://www.netaction.org/msoft/world/table.html
Thanks everybody!
Reply