Publishable or Published?

[Bowerbird at aol.com]

lou said:
>   Web browser user-agents render text (and inline images) 
>   in a platform-agnostic way.  The styling is dependent on context.  
>   When you lift only a piece, the context is lost.

i think you might be overthinking the problem.

by text styling, i mean font and fontsize, and bold, italics, and so on.
it's displayed there in the browser.  why not copy it to the clipboard?
(moreover, as i said, many browsers _do_ maintain the styling.)

by text formatting, i mean things like indentation on block quotes.
if a block-quote is copied to the clipboard, it could be indented,
e.g., with spaces, so that it's distinguishable from the text which
-- right there in the browser-window -- was _not_ indented.

or, to give another example, the c.s.s. file will sometimes call for
a header to have a certain amount of "space above" it.  this could be
represented -- whenever that text is copied to the clipboard -- by
the appropriate number of blank lines inserted above the heading,
in order to retain the essence of that formatting.  as it is, though,
this header is incapable of being distinguished from a line which
did _not_ have any "space above" it in the browser-window.

likewise, if the c.s.s. calls for paragraph indentation, couldn't text
copied to the clipboard have paragraphs indented with a few spaces?
of course it could.

i consider it an important consideration for readers to be able to 
re-purpose the text -- along with its styling and formatting --
as a "fair use" of that text.  (not to mention it's just plain nice.)


>   You're on your own there.  

well, since the software doesn't do it, well then, yes, i guess i am.

the question is who is to be the master, and who is to be the slave?


>   If there's fault (and I don't think there is), 
>   it lies with whatever you're pasting things into.

um, no, i don't think so.  the receiving application
can't do anything except take what is on the clipboard.
it is the application that _puts_ the text on the clipboard
with the burden of making sure it does a good job of doing that.


>   XHTML is its own, open file format.

that does nothing to solve the problem, though.

the only way around the problem that i have come up with
is to use the browser to print to a .pdf, and then run o.c.r. on
the .pdf, making sure to tell it to keep styling and formatting.
but my goodness, what a convoluted way of doing a task that
_should_ be as quick and easy as a simple copy-and-paste...

anyway, no reason to persist in this thread.  i just wanted to
see if anyone here knew of a solution that i was not aware of.


>   Seriously, no offense.

and i meant none either.

-bowerbird