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Re: Copy to Clipboard - ambush and abuse by javascript

From: David Booth <david@dbooth.org>
Date: Wed, 09 Jun 2010 20:35:28 -0400
To: "L. David Baron" <dbaron@dbaron.org>
Cc: "Roy T. Fielding" <fielding@gbiv.com>, ashok.malhotra@oracle.com, Noah Mendelsohn <nrm@arcanedomain.com>, Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@w3.org>, "www-tag@w3.org" <www-tag@w3.org>
Message-ID: <1276130128.2848.38914.camel@dbooth-laptop>
On Fri, 2010-06-04 at 19:27 -0700, L. David Baron wrote:
[ . . . ]
> The ability to manipulate what a user is copying is also important
> for applications on the Web.  If you're using a Web app like Google
> Docs, you want copy to copy a useful representation, not the
> internal representation that the editor uses.  

But it is the *browser* that renders things like HTML, plain text, PDF,
etc. -- not javascript.  Why should javascript be given the ability to
mess with it *after* the user has selected and told the browser to
*copy* it?  

When I tell my browser to copy, I expect my browser to *copy* -- not
copy-and-adulterate-under-web-site-control.  When I paste, whatever I
copied may be converted to the destination format for compatibility, but
that's a different issue.


-- 
David Booth, Ph.D.
Cleveland Clinic (contractor)

Opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect those of Cleveland Clinic.
Received on Thursday, 10 June 2010 00:35:57 UTC

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