Re: 2.4 feature list - native cut and paste.

Hi Martin,

msevior@physics.unimelb.edu.au wrote:
>
>>4. Native cut & paste (Hub)
>
>
> There is a HUGE amount of code in the RTF export and importer designed to
> deal with the complexities of cutting and pasting and particularly the
> complexities of pasting into different contexts.
>
> I'm not willing to help out much on this piece of code because I consider
> it a waste of time and I will accept no regressions from our current cut
> and paste code feature set.
>
> This includes our ability to interoperate with MS Word and other
> applications.
>
> Martin
>
>

I agree with Hub on this one. My problem with rtf is that is designed to
match the Word piecetable, which in turn is not designed to use a
Unicode based bidirectional algorithm. Instead in Word (and rtf) all
characters are tagged as ltr or rtl based on all kinds of things and it
is so bad that Word itself still has difficulties handling bidirectional
text properly (just yesterday I had to retype all Hebrew in a Word doc
of mine because when the doc was saved and reloaded, it layed out around
half of the rtl text in ltr order). It is actually not easy to produce
rtf output such that Word will lay it out in the same way the Unicode
algorithm will, and more or less impossible to revert that rtf back to
what it was on paste.

I do not think Hub is suggesting we get rid off rtf from the clipboard,
but rather that alongside plain text and rtf, we also put there a native
  stuff for c&p within AW itself. In any case, if this is not working
well by the agreed release date, it is easy to disable without any side
effects.

Tomas
Received on Mon Jan 10 18:07:57 2005