[css-text] copying text-transform'd text

On 04/01/2015 10:20 PM, Brad Kemper wrote:
> On Apr 1, 2015, at 4:01 PM, fantasai <fantasai.lists@inkedblade.net> wrote:
>> On 04/01/2015 11:55 AM, Brad Czerniak wrote:
>>> Specifically, for a particular use case (though there are undoubtedly others); A heading/title has text-tranform: uppercase;
>>> by default. When a user selects the text for copy/paste, it gets copied in upper case. Having the option to set
>>> text-transform: none; on ::selection would be a win.
>>
>> This seems like a browser bug. Nothing in the CSS spec says that
>> 'text-transform' should affect copy/paste. And probably it shouldn't.
>
> I agree with you, but as I recall from last time we had the conversation,
> most implementations do convert 'text-transform : uppercase' to all
> uppercase letters when copied. I know Safari does. I find it pretty
> annoying myself, but apparently most users are surprised when the all
> caps text they copied is not all caps when they paste it as plain text.

Gecko and Presto don't do this.

I think we probably need to get the browsers to agree on this
issue and put the required behavior in the spec, so authors know
what to expect.

Personally I don't think the copied text should be affected by
the transform: if that's a key part of the text's presentation,
then it should be done in the source. There's a lot of cases
where it wouldn't make sense to copy out the style. E.g. putting
the first word (or phrase) of an article is a stylistic choice
that shouldn't come out in the plaintext copy.

~fantasai

Received on Thursday, 2 April 2015 02:42:26 UTC