Re: [whatwg] Unicode -> ASCII copy/paste fallback

To expand on my own comment:

> Personally, I would expect and desire the CSS-generated content to be
copied.

...because THAT is what the user sees, per the browser rendering. I'm
surprised that neither Firefox nor Chrome exhibits that behavior.

Sincerely,
   James M. Greene
On Feb 13, 2015 6:30 AM, "James M. Greene" <james.m.greene@gmail.com> wrote:

> Sorry, David & Mathias. Hasty 6:00am reply here before my brain and eyes
> fully woke up!
>
> Interesting question. Personally, I would expect and desire the
> CSS-generated content to be copied.
>
> Sincerely,
>    James M. Greene
> On Feb 13, 2015 6:24 AM, "David Sheets" <kosmo.zb@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 12:18 PM, James M. Greene
>> <james.m.greene@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > In this case, you can use Unicode escape values by preceding them with a
>> > slash:
>> >
>> >   .rarr:after { content: "\2192"; }
>> >
>> >
>> > This is specified in the CSS 2.1 spec:
>> > http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/syndata.html#characters
>> >
>> > Personally, I probably would've just started on StackOverflow with this
>> > question (e.g. [1]) but no harm done.
>>
>> Hi James!
>>
>> Sorry, I wasn't clear. The issue is not with putting Unicode values
>> into CSS. The issue is that I would like unicode values to be copied
>> and pasted as a specific ASCII fallback value.
>>
>> That is, I would like the equivalent of "a &rarr; b" to appear on a
>> page but, upon copying, "a -> b" to show up in the clipboard.
>>
>> I have a solution that works in Firefox 36 (described in original
>> mail). Chrome 40 does not behave similarly.
>>
>> I can see some arguments for Chrome's behavior along security lines. I
>> certainly can understand the utility of Firefox's behavior because I
>> am writing a documentation generation tool for a programming language
>> with right arrows represented as -> but would like to render them as
>> →.
>>
>> This seems like a pretty straightforward document feature but I can't
>> seem to get interoperable behavior (or even find where such behavior
>> might be specified).
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> David
>>
>> >
>> > [1]:
>> >
>> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10393462/placing-unicode-character-in-css-content-value
>> >
>> > Sincerely,
>> >     James Greene
>> >
>> >
>> > On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 5:45 AM, David Sheets <kosmo.zb@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Hello,
>> >>
>> >> I have a page with
>> >>
>> >> a <span class="rarr"><span>-&gt;</span></span> b
>> >>
>> >> and style
>> >>
>> >> .rarr span { overflow: hidden; height: 0; width: 0; display:
>> inline-block;
>> >> }
>> >> .rarr::after { content: "→"; }
>> >>
>> >> (That's RIGHTWARDS ARROW x2192.)
>> >>
>> >> In Firefox 36, this copies and pastes like "a -> b" which is the
>> >> desired behavior. In Chrome 40, this copies and pastes like "a  b".
>> >>
>> >> Is my desired behavior (to show unicode but copy an ASCII
>> >> representation) generally possible? Are there specs somewhere about
>> >> copy/paste behavior? I looked in <https://html.spec.whatwg.org/> but
>> >> found nothing relevant.
>> >>
>> >> Is this the right venue for this question? Should I take it somewhere
>> >> else?
>> >>
>> >> Thanks,
>> >>
>> >> David Sheets
>> >
>> >
>>
>

Received on Friday, 13 February 2015 12:35:36 UTC