Text copied from a child note to another document - why are line breaks lost?

bjohas

When I copy text from a child note to another document, the line breaks are lost. Why is this? When I export the note, e.g. to RIS, the HTML that is produced within the RIS looks fine... It might be something to do with \cM - in which case, how can I copy text preserving line breaks?

dstillman

What program are you copying to?

It works fine for me copying to rich-text documents (e.g., Word). Copying to a plain-text document, I don't get newlines either. Unfortunately this appears to happen with stock TinyMCE as well, so there's not much we can do about it.

However, if you have a bibliographic style selected for Quick Copy and just drag the note to a plain-text editor instead, Zotero handles the note contents itself, and in that case it should get the newlines right.

bjohas

E.g. Google docs. It should accept rtf input, but I've seen this in other circumstances (on OS X).

"Drag the note" - excellent!! That works and solves my immediate problem - in two ways:

(1) Dragging into plain text context does get the line breaks right.

(2) Dragging into Google Docs preserves the correct rtf formatting (including italics and colours).

Out of interest: In general, what is the difference between copy/paste vs. drag? I had assumed they were the same, but clearly they are not. You said with the drag, Zotero handles the content somehow?

dstillman

With copy/paste, even though TinyMCE looks like a regular text box, you're essentially just copying from a webpage with complicated markup. The exact behavior is determined by the browser engine (Firefox in this case) and the markup used (TinyMCE).

With drag/drop, Zotero itself puts the actual note content on the clipboard as both plain text and HTML, with appropriate modifications to each for maximum compatibility with other programs.

bjohas

Thanks - that's really helpful!