Open Bug 417157 Opened 16 years ago Updated 8 months ago

Implement copy & paste for text format (Format Painter for copying font, -size, -style, color, alignment, indenting, numbering etc.)

Categories

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, enhancement)

Product:
Thunderbird
Component:
Message Compose Window
Type:
enhancement

Tracking

(Not tracked)

People

(Reporter: jongampark, Unassigned)

References

(
URL
)

Details

(Whiteboard: [gs])

Attachments

(3 files)

Vote button at the top of this bug
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top of page.jpg
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grafik.png
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Details 
User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10.4; en-US; rv:1.9b4pre) Gecko/2008021104 Minefield/3.0b4pre
Build Identifier: version 3.0a1pre (2008021203)

In HTML editing mode, you may colorize some text to emphasize and make it bold, and so on. In other part of email message, you may want to use the text format used before to format current text you edit.

It will be very convenient if there is a kind of format copy&paste feature as you can see it from the MS Word.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
Adding myself to CC
The inability to copy formats from one part of a message to another remains a primary pet peeve of mine in Thunderbird, and I cannot believe that this isn't a dupe of another bug with a long discussion.  Yesterday I was trying to get consistent titles and even a Heading 2 early in the e-mail was different than a Heading 2 later on; and there's no way to match formats with copied in text or maintain formatting in a message chain. 
A format painter is really important for any modern word processor/document editor/composer, and the absence of one in TB is a primary reason I don't recommend it to new folks and have considered switching to another option many times.
Please look at OpenOffice for code examples.
Yes, It is very strange that this basic function has never been developped, and also strange that only 5 people has voted for it so far since 2008 !
I personnally loose a lot of time arranging text formats "manually", while a simple copy/paste format button would be so helpful ...

I have no idea of the amount of time needed to develop this function, but I will definitely express my utmost gratefulness to the future developper !
The term "copy & paste" has an established meaning in the industry, and it is being misused here.  That is why nobody is paying attention to this bug.

Please change the bug title to use the terminology "Format Painter" that everybody understands.
Summary: Text format copy & paste [New Feature] → [New Feature]Text format copy & paste (Format Painter)
Format painter, that's it !
Your cage is wide open now, so fly little bird, at the speed of thunder, and bring us this long-time desired feature.
Many thanks in advance for the developpers !
For what it's worth, Microsoft's code internally calls this "copy and paste format." You can see this in the way you have to access the function in VBA.  Format painter is a better name, agreed.
Sorry I'm french and I don't understand how use "format painter" on TB
Can you explain to me
Cordially
Jakes
(In reply to WBT from comment #8)
> For what it's worth, Microsoft's code internally calls this "copy and paste
> format." You can see this in the way you have to access the function in VBA.
> Format painter is a better name, agreed.

Take a look at this article about using CTRL+SHIFT+V to paste formats:

http://www.infopackets.com/news/carols_corner_office/2007/20070413_using_format_painter_sans_the_mouse_ms_word.htm

Apparently the format painter functionality is also accessible for people without a mouse, as a kind of copying+pasting.  (I'd bet that very few people are even aware of this keyboard command.)  Whereas I think the term "format painter" refers specifically to the mouse interface.
How to use it on TB ?
thank you
(In reply to jakes from comment #11)
> How to use it on TB ?
> thank you

Jakes, this bug is saying that the "format painter" feature is NOT available for TB.  Vote for this bug if you want a programmer to add this feature.
Whiteboard: [gs]
This would be a nifty feature to have.

M$ Word implements this quite nicely. Actually, it's somewhat sophisticated, because it involves differentiated copying & pasting of two types of formats:
- character/font formats (char formats), e.g. all font properties, etc. 
- paragraph formats (par formats), e.g. bullets, alignment, indents etc.
It depends on your source selection and the target selection which of these will be copied or not. I suggest similar UI/behaviour for implementing this feature in TB.

Proposal 1 for UI/behaviour (like M$ Word, tested on M$ Word 2003)

Terms used:
0-length selection: single-click/ caret cursor `|` (for target, click inside a word)
char selection:     selection of one or more characters *inside* a paragraph
par selection:      seletion of one or more paragraphs

a) source: 0-length or par selection
   target: 0-length or par selection
-> copy char & par formats

b) *source: char selection*
   target: any
-> copy char formats only

c) source: any
   *target: char selection*
-> copy char formats only

This feels like a plausible and expected behaviour to me. It's less complex than it looks, and I suspect anything else will yield unexpected unexpected results. (E.g. if you deliberately select only some characters as format source, you wouldn't want the paragraph format to be copied along, would you?).
Summary: [New Feature]Text format copy & paste (Format Painter) → Implement copy & paste for text format (Format Painter for copying font, -size, -style, color, alignment, indenting, numbering etc.)
(In reply to Thomas D. from comment #14)
> Terms used:
> 0-length selection: single-click/ |-cursor (for source, click inside a word)
Sorry, that was supposed to be: "for *target*, click inside a word.
Somewhat surprisingly, Word will not copy formats sometimes if you place the target click between words.
See Also: → 90665
I do not understand why this feature does not exist on THUNDERBIRD!
This is a basic function for an email editor.
When I look at my email send via tunderbird on Oulook, I realize that there are often differences in type of text, size, ...
Please, please implement this function.
Sometimes I tell myself that I'm going back to OuTL00K just because of that!

This is such a valuable feature it is out of my understanding that it hasn't been implemented in the last years. Please enable the copying of formats! Anyone? Please! :-(

(In reply to info from comment #19)

This is such a valuable feature it is out of my understanding that it hasn't been implemented in the last years. Please enable the copying of formats! Anyone? Please! :-(

Are you able to assist with coding this up?
As you can easily imagine, this is entirely non-trivial.
As much as we'd wish for this, it's unlikely to get highest priority between hundreds of more pressing issues.

I was tempted to add this with an extension, but there does not seem to be any proper documentation for the new WebExtensions and MailExtensions format in Firefox and Thunderbird. Actually reading out the text format from the cursor position on a key event and pasting the copied format on a selection on another key event didn't sound too complicated to me, but maybe I'm wrong. I guess most people would be happy if the editor could throw away the format of copied text by default because in nine out of ten cases you do not want to take over the rich-text format of copied text into your mail.

Yes, please add a format painter feature to TBird. It would be muchly appreciated.

To register your support for this feature, you can vote for it using the VOTE button at the top of this bug, in the Details section.

(In reply to eberger from comment #23)

Question - a few minutes ago I added a comment supporting this feature enhancement. Then I read about voting for a bug but cannot figure out where to go to enter my votes.

(In reply to info from comment #21)

I was tempted to add this with an extension, but there does not seem to be any proper documentation for the new WebExtensions and MailExtensions format in Firefox and Thunderbird.

Hey info, I believe documentation has improved much since your comment, please have a look at:

For further information, you can link with John (:TbSync) who is our add-on expert.

Actually reading out the text format from the cursor position on a key event and pasting the copied format on a selection on another key event didn't sound too complicated to me, but maybe I'm wrong.

Please try it and report back!

I guess most people would be happy if the editor could throw away the format of copied text by default because in nine out of ten cases you do not want to take over the rich-text format of copied text into your mail.

You can right-click where you want to paste, and choose "Paste without formatting".

I would appreciate very much a such improvement of Tbird. It is the main default of this software.

Attached image top of page.jpg —

this is what I see at the top of my page. I do not see a Vote button.

Surprised this has not yet been implemented by whatever name you want to call it.

I tried to vote for it, but I must be missing something. I do not see a Vote button at the top of this page. I submitted an attachment to show what I see.

Attached image grafik.png —

This thread is confusing. I am well aware of pasting copied text without formatting. Use can use the Ctrl-Shift-V as mentioned above or just right click and select "paste without formatting."

What I want is the format painter. So if there is a section of text in my email whose format I wish to copy I can drag the cursor over it with a mouse to pick up its format (not the text) and then hit the format painter button, and then drag the mouse/cursor over the region that I would like to apply that format to. As mentioned above this is a standard feature in MS Word and Excel. It can also be applied in those programs by selecting the text, hitting ctrl-shift-c and then going to the text you want to apply the format to and hitting ctrl-shift-v.

I am surprised this wasn't in TB years ago.

Thanx for guidance on how to vote in prior comment. I must have done that a few months ago and so my vote button appeared differently.

eb

That's not the same. We want to copy the FORMAT and not the content and optionally apply that copied format multiple times to other parts of the same document.

I agree. That is what I tried to explain in my reply to the comment form Info.

The Thunderbird team understands what this request is about, not need to clarify (comment 30 was wrong about this bug, so I have marked it obsolete).

(In reply to eberger from comment #28)

Surprised this has not yet been implemented by whatever name you want to call it.

It's non-trivial and would probably consume a large amount of person-hours to implement - where you see just text, there'll be dozens of tags underneath, there's text formatting, paragraph-level formatting, we can't really copy format from mixed selections, but if we copy format from cursor selections, the format might be different from what you expect etc. etc. I repeat: It's non-trivial. It's also mostly editor territory, which is provided by the Mozilla platform shared with FF, not Thunderbird code as such.

Plus: As much as we'd want this - it's an RFE, nothing broken... Fixing what is broken will often get priority...

Thank you for the explanation. Hopefully one day ...

Just as an added note, not only is lack of a Format Painter disappointing, but I also have problems at times when I import text with the format included. I then can end up with a para of text in a format that I cannot match with the other text in my email. Sometimes just the size is incorrect and eve using the increase/decrease font size buttons won't get everything coordinated. It means that most time when I paste anything into an email the safest route is to always do it free of formatting. Those features work seamlessly in Word.

I came to TB from Eudora about 2-3 years ago. I was a long Eudora holdout. I seem to recall that Eudora handled such formatting better, but I cannot recall for certain.

Thank you. In general TB is great and was a real lifesaver when I had to jettison Eudora because of its incompatibility with evolving email systems.

Severity: normal → S3

I guess I need to be educated on how TB development works. I read on the one hand that stuff only gets done when someone decides to take it on. I also just read this with a simple Google search (from https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/05/thunderbird-is-thriving-our-2022-financial-report/):

"Donations In 2022

Last year, our mighty donor base – representing approximately 300,000 daily users – contributed a total of $6,442,704 in donations to the Thunderbird project."

What I do know is that there are still long-lasting bugs and some very needed enhancements, in the case of the format painter going back 16 years. What am I missing?

If this isn't the place to ask this, please let me know where to go and I'll do it. Thanks.

(In reply to Dave Labrecque from comment #37)

I guess I need to be educated on how TB development works. I read on the one hand that stuff only gets done when someone decides to take it on.

The bountysource.com website allows open source donors to specify that their money should be used for specific fixes/features, rather than all the money ending up in a pool for the maintainers to spend however they like. Maybe Thunderbird should support that model. I think GNOME used bounties as well. It probably has some downsides, though.

I started using Thunderbird again recently, and have to say the quality has noticeably improved. The UI looks better, and the search feature is much more accurate and efficiently handles huge mail archives.

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