A chrome extension to copy stylelessly | Hacker News Reader

A chrome extension to copy stylelessly

chrome.google.com

35 pointsRhonkar45 comments

This can also be handled by a clipboard manager, which will have the nice side effect of making your life 1000 times better in every way. My current favorites are Ditto[1] on Windows and ClipMenu[2] on the Mac.

Clipboard managers are so insanely useful that I can't believe everyone doesn't use them. The basic idea is that everything you've copied in the last day or so should be at your fingertips. This changes your clipboard from something you use just to move a chunk of text from point A to point B, to a stack you can push things to whenever you think you might want to use them later. Which, if you're programming or writing text, happens all the freakin' time.

So instead of `cmd-V` to paste, you do `cmd-shift-V` to pop up a list of everything you've copied recently, and then `down-arrow down-arrow down-arrow return` to paste the item three copies ago. If you hold down `cmd` while hitting return, you get the item as plain text. This works system-wide and becomes muscle memory after a day or so.

Ditto comes with some nice advanced features as well, like selecting a range of items to paste all at once, or typing to search your entire clipboard history. But just the basic clipboard-history stack is the game changer.

If you're not convinced yet, here's a few scenarios where it's amazing:

* Copy a list of items as you read through a long web page and then paste them all into a spreadsheet. * Copy comments you think you might want to reply to as you read through a long thread. * Copy someone's name, employer, address, phone number, and email address from various parts of a site to paste into the references section of your resume. * Copy snippets from four different Stack Overflow answers, then go and use them as a toolbox to build a function that solves your problem. * Copy something you're planning to paste in a second, get distracted, copy three other things, and still have the first thing ready and waiting instead of having to go back to find it again. * Get in the habit of cutting text you don't want instead of deleting, so you can paste it back ten minutes later if you change your mind.

I know this seems like a ridiculous rant, but seriously, if you use a keyboard all day this is life changing.

[1] http://ditto-cp.sourceforge.net/ [2] http://www.clipmenu.com/

On the OSX side, if you use Alfred[1] then you already have a clipboard manager[2]. I have cmd-shift-v set to popup Alfred's clipboard history. The nice part about Alfred is you can search (text and regex) your history and use cmd+1-9 to quick select the first 9 in your history. You can also exclude certain apps from being save (ie password managers) and save frequently used things to snippets (I use this to save frequent responses to customer tickets)

The number of times this has saved my ass or at least significant amounts of my time is fairly large.

[1] http://www.alfredapp.com/

[2] http://support.alfredapp.com/features:clipboard

This is part of their powerpack add-on, so not everyone may have it right out the box.

I second this. For a long time I was just using basic Alfred and had ClipMenu installed separately. A couple weeks ago I bought the Power Pack, and its clipboard manager is way better than ClipMenu.

I've often wondered why one would want such a thing and appreciate you taking the time to explain it.

Ditto is fantastic. The data storage is in SQLite -- fast and capacious -- and it supports patterns searches of history. Usually, one can hotkey it up, type in a couple of characters, and be at or within a couple of down arrows of the entry of interest.

I wish I could find something truly comparable, in the *NIX world.

Reading this that does sound very useful, are there any helpful HNers that know of a similar *NIX solution?

You can paste without style on Windows with CTRL+Shift+V, so what is the point in this? Not going to give an app access to all my data on all websites I visit for no benefit.

Same with shift-alt-cmd-v (I think) on Mac.

This doesn't work well in certain situations (as described in Andy Mo's answer on the following page: http://superuser.com/questions/512491/copy-and-paste-plain-t...

I use (and love) a workflow called "Plain Text Paste" in Alfred, which I bind to the keyboard shortcut CMD-SHIFT-v.

It's cmd-s-v

This does not work for me on Windows 7 in Excel, Word, Outlook, etc.

Try ctrl+alt+v

Rich text pasting sounded like such a great idea 10 years ago. Let's just admit that it has proven to be the wrong choice 90% of the time. Can we start a petition to make plain text the default?

"Plain Text Pasting Now!"

That's so true. Most of the time, you are pasting short passages, that should adapt to the target document style. It is a pretty rare use case that you copy and paste a larger snippet of another document. And only then it might make sense to retain the source formatting.

Defaulting to "paste and match style" (which could be plain text) would be quite sufficient, IMHO.

It’s really the difference between “rich text” (what you get from Markdown, what you used to get in Wordpad, sort of what HTML2 is like) and “styled text” (what you get from CSS.)

In professional publishing tools (InDesign, Publisher), these are rightly thought of as two separate formats: your content is rich text, written by a journalist or copywriter and saved as .rtf. Your publication is a set of flows, each of which has a data binding to a separate rich-text document, and a set of styling information applied on top.

Really, I’d be just fine if pasting text kept the bold parts bold, the italics italicized, and the links linked (i.e. kept the “rich text” parts) between, say, an HTML page and a Word document. What I don’t want is for the Word document to render the text in 11pt #222222 Helvetica, just because that’s what the page was styled like. That’s a property of the flow the text was in, not the text itself.

Am I the only one who finds the broad permissions that are required by many Chrome extensions crazy from a security perspective? This one can:

  - Access to your data on all websites
  - Access data you copy and paste

Talk about a non-starter, even if I were to trust the developer. Chrome is all too happy to auto-update extensions by default. All it takes is one extension developer compromised to have a nice little copy/paste and bank-website logger that phones home. I could have trusted the developer. I could have reviewed the source code. I could do a number of things and still open up myself to risk for such things. I understand this particular extension needs said permissions, but there has to be a better way. Many extensions ask for permissions they have no need for. Looking at the install numbers, people are all to happy to hand them out. I imagine some of the trust comes via proxy of being on the Chrome store.

This is an extension that does copy and paste. Your complaint may be valid, but not for this extension.

You are absolutely correct. My critique wasn't directed at this extension, but Chrome in general. In this instance, I'd love to see:

  - Access to your data on all websites (when directly activated)
  - Access data you copy and paste (when directly activated)

It is my understanding that Chrome does not have this level of granularity in permissions currently.

Yeah it does. Apps can have permission to the current tab when you click on their action icon (either in URL or to the right of it)

I agree though that this app has permissions that are too broad.

I use a tiny app on Windows called "PureText" that removes formatting from any text copied to the clipboard. It's lovely.

Second this. Can't live without PureText.

Mac: FormatMatch is great. Lightweight and runs in the menu bar in case you want to temporarily disable it.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/formatmatch/id445211988

I have been using jumpcut - http://jumpcut.sourceforge.net/ - as my "clipboard buffering" tool and it pastes stylelessly

Do you know if there's any way to get it to not save clipping from certain apps (like KeePass)? I love Jumpcut, I just wish it wasn't quite so helpful with remembering recent passwords.

I don't think it has such feature out f the box but as it is open source, it is always hackable :p http://sourceforge.net/projects/jumpcut/

My if-all-else-fails fallback is to go via notepad. I've got depressingly quick at: Windows+r notepad enter ctrl+v ctrl+a ctrl+c alt+f4 n

If you're in the browser, you can also paste into the address bar... (ctrl-L ctrl-v ctrl-a ctrl-c)

Fine for oneliners but this doesn't preserve newlines

Same for me :) For a speedup, you may create a link to notepad in C:\Windows\System32 and call it "n", then you don't have to type whole "notepad" but just "n".

Control+Alt+V or Control+Shift+V in most applications that support rich text will paste without formatting.

Gmail supports pasting without styles with the shortcut Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+V . Would make the example redundant

Indeed; not only Gmail, it's a Chrome feature (right-click > Paste as plain text).

As far as i was concerned this is standard practice, it's implemented in Thunderbird and Microsoft office products too if my memory serves.

For anyone looking for a clipboard manager for Windows and Linux, check out my Python and PySide (Qt) application at https://bitbucket.org/scottwernervt/clipmanager. I really liked Ditto but I couldn't find a similar app on Arch/Ubuntu.

On most Google products (docs & gmail for sure) cmd+shift+v will paste minus the styling. It doesn't cover all use cases, but I have found the keyboard shortcut to be very useful.

What the difference between this and the already built in shortcut on osx

⌘-⇧-⌥-V - Apply the style of the surrounding text to the inserted object (Paste and Match Style)

CMD + ALT + SHIFT + V in OSX. Sort of a pointless app.

Can we get the source for this extension? It gets access to all website data so there really should be some verifiable source included.

Chrome extensions are just zip files of HTML, CSS, and JS. If nothing else, you could install it in a throwaway user profile and look at the code there. It could be really hairy minified stuff, so proper source would be better.

I keep the Chrome Extension Source Viewer handy for exactly that.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chrome-extension-s...

This is great. Thank you.

CTRL-SHIFT-V in Ubuntu also

On a mac, to pase without style simply hit:

Command + Shift + v

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