Ecma-48 proposed styling controls update updated & math expression representation proposal update

[Eli Zaretskii]

> CC: "marius.spix at web.de" <marius.spix at web.de>,
>         "unicode at corp.unicode.org"
>  <unicode at corp.unicode.org>
> Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2024 20:03:37 +0000
> From: Doug Ewell via Unicode <unicode at corp.unicode.org>
> 
> Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> 
> >> How is this handled in Word, or in any other WYSIWYG editor?
> >
> > They use specialized formats of the clipboard data, where the styles
> > and typefaces are preserved.  See
> >
> > https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/dataxchg/clipboard-formats
> 
> I know the internal format is different. Marius wasn’t talking about that. He was talking about the user experience of copying and pasting styled text when the styling data is invisible, and appearing to claim this was an intractable problem.

Sorry, I'm probably missing something, because I don't see the
relevance.  My point is that copy/paste through the clipboard uses
formats that are not plain text, and encode the styles and typefaces
by using methods that are not compatible with plain text.

> Alternatively, why is the stated user-experience problem for ECMA-48 not a problem for Word?

I thought I answered that?  Or what do you mean by "user experience"?

> >> What about in WordPerfect for DOS, where different foreground and
> >> background colors in text mode represented bold, italics,
> >> underlining, etc.?
> >
> > You mean, copying from some part of WordPerfect document to another
> > part of the same document?  Because DOS supported only one program at
> > at ime, and didn't have a clipboard (or anything similar) at all.
> 
> OK, good point. What about WordPerfect for Windows, or WordPad, or [pick your favorite tool from a non-Windows environment] where the formatting isn’t visible?

If pasting between applications, the answer is again clipboard format
that is not plain text.  If you copy plain text, the formatting is
lost.