#5753 HIGH Update.: A shared copyText() method should exist in the common Sugar API.

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#5753: A shared copyText() method should exist in the common Sugar API.
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  Reporter:  legutierr  |       Owner:  marco    
      Type:  defect     |      Status:  new      
  Priority:  high       |   Milestone:  Update.2 
 Component:  sugar      |     Version:  Build 650
Resolution:             |    Keywords:           
  Verified:  0          |    Blocking:           
 Blockedby:             |  
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Changes (by tomeu):

 * cc: tomeu (added)


Comment:

 Replying to [ticket:5753 legutierr]:
 > There are a number of bugs filed relating to the fact that copying text
 out of certain activities breaks the clipboard in some way (Browse: #5664
 #2747; XoIRC/Logviewer: #5389; Journal: #5611; Write: #5752).  As I
 understand it, solutions already proposed in some of those cases involve
 fixing code directly in the originating activity, or innvolve modifying
 mime-type definitions to accommodate the activity's specific
 implementation; but considering that this error seems already to have been
 made multiple times by multiple developers, without a system-wide fix, the
 error will probably be made again in new activities.

 True.

 > Although I haven't seen the code, this behavior ''seems'' to point to
 the fact that each activity implements its own version of "copy text",
 passing custom data to the clipboard, including mime types and the like.
 In cases where an activity doesn't do this correctly, the clipboard breaks
 (and the Journal as well in some cases).



 > Although the clipboard should be able to hold custom data and
 dynamically-defined mime-types, there is no reason for the clipboard to
 treat different text clippings differently just because they come from
 different activities.  If there is any type of data that should be treated
 the same by everything, it is text!

 Well, the problem is that it is not only text. We have plain text in
 different encodings plus rtf, html, etc. As activities can offer and
 accept a subset of those formats, some negotiation needs to happen. AFAIK,
 the situation is the same in other X-based desktops, win32 and osx.

 We certainly want the users to think that it is only text, but for that we
 need some cooperation from activity developers.

 In my opinion, the most we can do is to decide some standardized formats
 for each kind of data.

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Ticket URL: <http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/5753#comment:2>
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