Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2010 12:30 am Post subject: Unable to copy & drop text from NeoOffice to email
I just downloaded the Neo Office 3.2.1 today, together with the latest patch, but have run into a problem. When copying text to drop directly into a Thunderbird email, the formatting gets screwed up-- sometimes messages are terribly garbled, with a hash of computer symbols where periods and quotes ought to go, and always the text is double spaced where it should be single spaced. When I paste text in, it's always preceded by a line of computer code like these:
I have never had this problem before. I really don’t want to be forced to send all text as attachments. I am a writer, and some editors require that sent copy be pasted directly into the email, not as an attachment. It’s terrifically time-consuming to have to go over text line by line & correct. Can someone suggest what I can do about this? I never ran into this problem until today's NeoOffice download.
Thank you very much for any help or suggestions you may offer.
Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2010 1:52 am Post subject: Reply to Pluby
You've done exactly what I do when I copy & drop text.
I wonder if the problem might connected with a setting on my Thunderbird, which is version 3.1.6. Perhaps I should paste the question on a Thunderbird forum.
Another possibility-- which I hate to even think about-- is that this may be an unexpected side effect of some other downloading I did today-- I downloaded the Sophos free anti-virus program for Mac and ran a complete scan of all local drives. I hope this isn't the source, as it could be a terribly tangled ball to unravel. Maybe I should try uninstalling the Sophos?
Do you think those lines of code that pop up as headings on my cut & pastes could be a clue to where the problem's originating?
Thanks for having replied to today's email so quickly, Pluby.
Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2010 9:12 am Post subject: Re: Reply to Pluby
iship wrote:
I wonder if the problem might connected with a setting on my Thunderbird, which is version 3.1.6. Perhaps I should paste the question on a Thunderbird forum.
Your comment made me realize that I have Thunderbird set to compose messages in plain text only but the default is to compose in HTML format. Once I enabled HTML composing on in Thunderbird, I was able to reproduce what you see.
What is happening is that when you copy or start dragging in NeoOffice Writer, the selected content is pushed to the Mac OS X pasteboard in several different data formats: HTML, RTF, and plain text. When you paste in Thunderbird and have enabled composing in HTML, Thunderbird will paste the HTML data format and ignore the others.
Fortunately, there is a way to force Thunderbird to paste the plain text data format while composing in HTML is enabled: copy the content in NeoOffice and then, in Thunderbird, select the Edit :: Paste Without Formatting menu.
Note that gecko browsers and the clipboard have a strange relationship. For instance, Camino doesn't seem to copy html to the clipboard when you copy some text from a page... _________________ "What do you think of Western Civilization?"
"I think it would be a good idea!"
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2010 3:12 pm Post subject: Yes, Pluby- thanks!
Your suggestions worked-- I paste first, then select the pasted text & choose the “paste unformatted†option, and the text reassembles properly. Whew! The email program still seems out of whack, but I think not related to NeoOffice, but rather to some embarrassingly foolish mistakes I made yesterday as I updated. You have solved my text transmission problem. Once again, thanks.
FYI. It may not solve your e-mail problems, but you may want to try disabling composing mail in HTML format in Thunderbird. The whole purpose of composing in HTML is to allow you to format text in your e-mail and if your don't want any formatting, then disabling this feature may be useful for you.
To disable composing in HTML, select Thunderbird's Tools :: Account Settings menu and in the dialog that appears, expand your account name, click on the "Composition & Addressing" subitem, uncheck the "Compose messages in HTML format" checkbox, and press the OK button. After that, any new e-mail messages that you start writing will have no formatting and you will be able to paste or drag directly from NeoOffice as well.
Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2010 3:58 pm Post subject: To Pluby- Disable html?
My hesitation with this is that much of my writing is poetry, which sometimes involves unusual formatting-- jagged lines, bold text & italics, unpredictable spacing. I also occasionally edit poetry publications. A computer ago, when I was still using a PC, I was editing a poetry anthology & found that the formatting often was screwy in plain text. So I settled on sending everything in both plain text & html. I’ve continued this, though I’ve been happily working in the Mac/NeoOffice world for several years now.
I’m wondering if disabling html would be a good idea. Would disabling “composing†in html still enable me to “send†in html?? (This is discreetly passing over the question “what the hell is htmlâ€).
Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2010 4:03 pm Post subject: Re: To Pluby- Disable html?
iship wrote:
I’m wondering if disabling html would be a good idea. Would disabling “composing†in html still enable me to “send†in html?? (This is discreetly passing over the question “what the hell is htmlâ€).
Disabling composing leaves you with only plain text so no HTML will be sent.
HTML is the data format used by web pages. In HTML format, you can specify formatting attributes for text like bold, italics, font size, etc. In contrast, plain has no way to specify formatting. Plain text is characters only.
Posted: Wed Nov 10, 2010 2:18 pm Post subject: Problem & Suggestion
Pluby:
The disable "paste without formatting" work-around is not as easy as I thought it was. It doesn't allow me to paste several different pieces down into one email, which I often do. It does work if I copy each piece separately and paste them all down into one NeoOffice document, then copy THAT and paste it into the email. But that's a bit of a nuisance. From your previous reply, it seems that this is a problem with the Max OS X pasteboard-Thunderbird interface. But it didn't work that way in my previous version of NeoOffice, although I had html enabled. I'm wondering if there is something that has changed in the code of your newest upgrade, and if so, if you might put it on your list of fixes when you can get to it.
One more thing which has changed in the new version-- choosing large blocks of text is harder. Previously I could hold down the shift and the apple (command?) key, select a line of text, then scroll down line by line, releasing when I got to the end of the text I wanted to choose. But now the "shift apple" command, if I'm choosing more than a few lines, wants to race down so fast that it involves some swift juggling to get it to end at just the right place, and I often have to repeat the process. It is still possible to select text more precisely by scrolling down the trackpad with my finger while holding the select bar (? sorry my vocabulary is inadequate) with my thumb, but for large blocks of text this leads to a very sore thumb. If this is due to a change in the newest upgrade, it would be nice if you were able to fix it when you can get around to working on the word processing code.
Meanwhile I will just keep "working around," appreciating the elegance of the NeoOffice word processing program.
Posted: Wed Nov 10, 2010 2:38 pm Post subject: Re: Problem & Suggestion
iship wrote:
But it didn't work that way in my previous version of NeoOffice, although I had html enabled. I'm wondering if there is something that has changed in the code of your newest upgrade, and if so, if you might put it on your list of fixes when you can get to it.
You must have been using a very old version of NeoOffice since we added HTML to the list of data formats that NeoOffice pushes to the Mac OS X pasteboard clear back in April of 2009. Also, since early 2010 when NeoOffice 3.1.1 was released, NeoOffice has been using the same underlying OpenOffice.org 3.1.1 code so there is really is not anything new in the recent past.
iship wrote:
But now the "shift apple" command, if I'm choosing more than a few lines, wants to race down so fast that it involves some swift juggling to get it to end at just the right place, and I often have to repeat the process.
I think you want to press only the Shift-Up_or_Down_Arrow keys. Do not press the Command key as pressing the Shift-Command-Up_or_Down_Arrow keys selects to the beginning or end of the document.
Edit by pluby: You can also press the Shift-Option-Up_or_Down_Arrow keys to select the previous or next paragraph.
Posted: Wed Nov 10, 2010 3:00 pm Post subject: Works
The Shift plus Down process works.
It's possible I had a very old version. I realize that upgrading is inevitable & necessary, but I tend to hang on to things for a long time, with an "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" philosophy. I'd have to go into my last back-up to tell you exactly what version I was using. Guess the html issue is something I'll just have to live with.
I think I have found a way to fix this problem. I looked through the OpenOffice.org code to see if any of the extraneous text pasted in Thunderbird and I found the OpenOffice.org is prepending extra data onto the HTML content. This extra data was needed by older versions of Microsoft Office and without that data, such older Microsoft Office versions would not paste any HTML on the Mac OS X clipboard.
My tests indicate that if I remove the OpenOffice.org code that prepends that extra data, pasting the HTML format into either Microsoft Office 2004 or 2008 so clearly this extra data is not needed for the vast majority of NeoOffice users so I have removed that code.
Can you install the following test patch and tell us if you can now paste or drag formatted text into Thunderbird from NeoOffice?:
Posted: Wed Nov 10, 2010 5:35 pm Post subject: No Soap
I downloaded & installed the intel patch (I'm using a MacBook pro), but the only change this made was to eliminate the line of html code which automatically opened every paste-up. Single space text still comes through as double-spaced, and I'm still unable to copy & paste two separate items into one email & then unformat the whole. When I paste the two chunks of text, then choose "select all," then select "paste as unformatted"-- the first text simply disappears, and the second one I pasted down shapes itself up, (always) duplicates itself. Quirky.
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