"Hidden text" being copied to the clipboard?

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Brummelchen
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Joined: March 19th, 2005, 10:51 am

Re: "Hidden text" being copied to the clipboard?

Post by Brummelchen »

Surely all copied text should be plain text? What possible reason could there be to allow non-plain text to enter the clipboard? That's just opening up the web for abuse? People surely want to see what they're copying and know what they're copying. The clipboard is a simple tool. It seems like Firefox is trying to turn it into something more complicated, for no apparent reason?
Please read again: Firefox is copying text AND format, its up on the receiver to rip format and use plain text only.
you need an extension to get plain text from firefox.
this is and was regular behavior since minimum 2014
https://www.thewindowsclub.com/copy-and ... me-firefox
Posted ... on October 3, 2014
theat leads to another question - why NOW asking?
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DanRaisch
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Re: "Hidden text" being copied to the clipboard?

Post by DanRaisch »

Surely all copied text should be plain text?
That would make sense only if the text copied was originally plain text. The fact is that HTML tags are not displayed by browsers, or by word processors unless the user changes default settings, and when text on a web page is copied to the clip board, the tags are copies along with the visible text. That's totally normal and appropriate behavior.
Diane Vigil
Posts: 316
Joined: October 6th, 2010, 3:55 am

Re: "Hidden text" being copied to the clipboard?

Post by Diane Vigil »

There is also the Copy Plain Text extension -- you can copy as usual (with formatting) or right-click to choose (among other things) Copy Plain Text.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... plaintext/
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therube
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Location: Maryland USA

Re: "Hidden text" being copied to the clipboard?

Post by therube »

Extension does not work, as the text that is being copied is (already) "plain text".

The error is not with the copy, it is with the selector.
Just because what you want to copy looks like it is what you want, what you have selected is actually different.
Fire 750, bring back 250.
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.19) Gecko/20110420 SeaMonkey/2.0.14 Pinball CopyURL+ FetchTextURL FlashGot NoScript
Diane Vigil
Posts: 316
Joined: October 6th, 2010, 3:55 am

Re: "Hidden text" being copied to the clipboard?

Post by Diane Vigil »

I see what you mean. While the plaintext extension does allow the removal of some of the formatting, the underlying HTML coding is still there and gets copied along with the extra "stuff".

I guess the issue is "what is plain text"? To me, that does not mean whatever looks like "only text" on a web page. It means text with no coding in it:
- no HTML coding from web pages, for example, or
- no printer-type commands from Word documents

But I see you've already mentioned a text editor. To me, that would be a "plain text editor". But using Firefox (or Vivaldi, which I just tried) to copy part of a web page will pick up the underlying HTML coding.
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RobertJ
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Re: "Hidden text" being copied to the clipboard?

Post by RobertJ »

.
If I search using Google with Firefox, Chrome, Safari or Opera for "definition word". The hidden text is copied for each of those four browsers.

Since this behavior IS NOT unique to Firefox it is not a Firefox issue (or any kind of issue).

Locking.

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FF 92.0 - TB 78.13 - Mac OSX 10.13.6
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