Right now we only support plain text copy and paste. Rich text copy and paste within the document will be supported next, and eventually rich text paste from content copied outside the document will be supported where possible.

Tweaking title to clarify for enhancement request, so this'll look nice in the tracker. :)

Confirmed still a missing feature in current version. :-)

orbit wrote:

When copying one portion of the article and pasting into the same article, rich text pasting IS supported. Copying from an external source (another article or another application), only plain text pasting is supported.

@liangent, what platform/browser/version/method are you using to copy and paste? Very specific instructions would be helpful.

orbit wrote:

Oops, James just pointed out to me that this bug was originally filed against the December demo that used a very different copy/paste mechanism. For now, I'm leaving this open as an enhancement to fully support rich text copy and paste from external sources.

Mass-moving items into VisualEditor product

Mass-move out of "General" to "ContentEditable".

Clarify title

orbit wrote:

With this change:
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/13423/
rich copying and pasting from other ve instances (same wiki, same browser) is supported. I've changed the title to only indicate the feature request for rich copy and paste from external sources (other websites, Microsoft Word, etc).

orbit wrote:

Due to added complexity to the Linear Model in the last 6 months, the previously-supported copy and paste from separate ve instances is no longer supported as we work toward a universal solution.

• Bug 37860 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

• Bug 50946 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

• Bug 50283 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

• Bug 50401 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

• Bug 50282 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

• Bug 51220 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Since 51220 has been marked as a duplicate, i figure it might be useful to respond here - especially since this bug has been open for a while.

At the moment it would seem that it is impossible to rearrange or move a section in the visual editor if that section contains an image inside it. Drag and Drop is not supported as of yet, and copy / cut and pasting of such as section results in the removal of all wikisyntax (And the image) from that section.

Images themselves are often present in the middle of a section so this issue is common. At the same time the article's that receive most traffic are the most likely to suffer from this issue (If we assume that the best quality article's tend to be the ones most commonly visited).

Is it supposed to be working for cut and paste inside a single article?

I've had variable results trying to rearrange sections in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MathML
in particular the subsections of Software support. Sometimes it works fine other times it loses formatting and references.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Edit this revision:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MathML&oldid=565784757&veaction=edit

2. Scroll down to Software support
3. Make a couple of blank lines above "Editors"
4. Select the whole of the Web browsers section. When selecting ensure the selection is a complete rectangle going all the way to the right hand border.
5. Copy and paste above Editors

If instead selecting a rectangular region the selection goes to the last character on the last line, the copy and paste seems to work fine.

• Bug 52091 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

• Bug 37860 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Another example discussed at
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback#Editing existing bulleted lists

THe bug occurred in editing [[en:Education in the United States#Electives]], all styling and links are lost

To reproduce the error reliably:
edit any bullet list immediately preceding a section header with the visual editor.

1. Bring the cursor to the beginning of the last bullet.
2. Holding down the CTRL-key, press the down-cursor key, thereby selecting the entire line plus some part of the following header.
3. Still holding down the CTRL-key, press the left-cursor key just until the header letters no longer appear as selected.
4. Cut the selected text and paste it in front of an earlier bullet point (or, probably, anywhere else in the article). Weird results ensue.

Incidentally, as soon as the text is cut, the up-cursor button is disabled.
I believe that the following line's header formatting codes are actually selected but the user cannot see this. Microsoft Word has similar buggy behavior.

I can reproduce the same on chrome on a mac, with shift and arrow keys.

I am noticing that in latest Mac/Chrome, in-article formatting is preserved when copying or cutting and pasting. However in latest Mac/Firefox all formatting is being stripped. Is that issue within the scope of this ticket, or should I open another?

(In reply to comment #22)

I am noticing that in latest Mac/Chrome, in-article formatting is preserved
when copying or cutting and pasting. However in latest Mac/Firefox all
formatting is being stripped. Is that issue within the scope of this ticket,
or
should I open another?

Please open another (though I can't reproduce locally - both Chrome and Firefox work the same for me).

Does this "rich formatting" include references and other VisualEditor artifacts?

Use case:

An editor is translating an article from en.wiki to zz.wiki. Opens both pages with VisualEditor, copies the content from en.wiki and pastes it to zz.wiki.

@Quim, good question. The current implementation we're working on will let you copy cross wiki with no questions asked, but as you point out, if the template or image doesn't exist on the other wiki you going to have a Bad Time.

We'll need to think about how we sanitise the data or warn the user when copy-pasting cross wiki.

Re-prioritising down, as the main work is now complete.