Cut/Paste Rich text on Mac/Safari TextArea

When I Copy/Paste Rich Text into a awt TextArea it behaves differently on
Windows XP as compared to Mac.

For eg. visit the following webpage

http://www.javacoffeebreak.com/java108/java108.html

There is a TextArea somewhere near the bottom.
Now mark some text from the webpage itself for eg.

For eg. I copied the following area from the webpage
---------------------------------------------------------------
TextField
Textfield components are useful for .....
...............
...............textfield will generate an event.

Example source
---------------------------------------------------------------

Now I paste it in the textarea in the applet - In windows,
"Example source" appears as plain text.
Where in Mac/OSX - the text "Example source" appears
as a link, just like it is in the webpage.

How do I disable this on Mac - i.e. I want the text stripped
& pasted as plain text.

I am using Java 1.5 on both platforms
IE is IE6

Safari is 1.2 (v125)
Mac is OSX 10.3.9

AWT docs on both Apple's site & Mac's site say that
it's supposed to be plain text, so why is it rendering
HTML?

cpprogrammer:
>
> When I Copy/Paste Rich Text into a awt TextArea it behaves differently on
> Windows XP as compared to Mac.
....
> AWT docs on both Apple's site & Mac's site say that
> it's supposed to be plain text, so why is it rendering
> HTML?

It isn't rendering HTML. It's rendering styled text -- attached URLs
can be part of text styling in OS X. For comparison, paste the same text
into TextEdit.

As for how to make it stop, I'm afraid I can't help you.


--
Jens Ayton

Jens Ayton wrote:
> cpprogrammer:
>>
>> When I Copy/Paste Rich Text into a awt TextArea it behaves
>> differently on Windows XP as compared to Mac.
>> For eg. visit the following webpage
>>
>> http://www.javacoffeebreak.com/java108/java108.html
>>
>> There is a TextArea somewhere near the bottom.
>> Now mark some text from the webpage itself for eg.
>>
>> For eg. I copied the following area from the webpage
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------
>> TextField
>> Textfield components are useful for .....
>> ..............
>> ..............textfield will generate an event.
>>
>> Example source
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Now I paste it in the textarea in the applet - In windows,
>> "Example source" appears as plain text.
>> Where in Mac/OSX - the text "Example source" appears
>> as a link, just like it is in the webpage.
>>
>> How do I disable this on Mac - i.e. I want the text stripped
>> & pasted as plain text.
>>
>> I am using Java 1.5 on both platforms
>> IE is IE6
>>
>> Safari is 1.2 (v125)
>> Mac is OSX 10.3.9
>>
>> AWT docs on both Apple's site & Mac's site say that
>> it's supposed to be plain text, so why is it rendering
>> HTML?
>
> It isn't rendering HTML. It's rendering styled text -- attached URLs
> can be part of text styling in OS X. For comparison, paste the same
> text into TextEdit.


When I paste it into the Apple Works Word Processor, I see the colors
and all but I don't see the HTML Links. When I open Finder-> ShowClipboard
I see the colors but again I don't see the Links - the Clipboard shows
Contents
Text.

Only when I paste it to awt.TextArea do the links become active.
Even there, when I do TextArea.getText, I get plain text, without the
links & the formatting.

Why is Apple JVM's implementation of TextArea so non-standard
& going against it's own docs - I don't even find this non-standard
behaviour in the Microsoft 1.1. JVM.


>
> As for how to make it stop, I'm afraid I can't help you.

Michael Ash wrote:
> In comp.sys.mac.programmer.help cpprogrammer <(E-Mail Removed)>
> wrote:
>>>
>>> It isn't rendering HTML. It's rendering styled text -- attached
>>> URLs can be part of text styling in OS X. For comparison, paste the
>>> same text into TextEdit.
>>
>> When I paste it into the Apple Works Word Processor, I see the colors
>> and all but I don't see the HTML Links. When I open Finder->
>> ShowClipboard I see the colors but again I don't see the Links - the
>> Clipboard shows Contents
>> Text.
>
> This is because neither AppleWorks nor the Finder's clipboard viewer
> can display links in styled text (or if they can, they don't
> understand this OS-standard way). Try TextEdit as was originally
> suggested, and you will see that it (as well as any other Cocoa
> application with a standard text view) preserves links too.

Yes. TextEdit also shows it.

>
>> Only when I paste it to awt.TextArea do the links become active.
>> Even there, when I do TextArea.getText, I get plain text, without the
>> links & the formatting.
>>
>> Why is Apple JVM's implementation of TextArea so non-standard
>> & going against it's own docs - I don't even find this non-standard
>> behaviour in the Microsoft 1.1. JVM.
>
> I know nothing about Java, but it wouldn't surprise me if there was a
> certain amount of leeway allowed in the standard when implementing
> these things, and so including copied links was perfectly allowed.

I doubt it, especially, when both Sun & Apple's java docs say clearly
that TextArea is only for plain text.

> If
> you want to get rid of them, perhaps you can watch for text coming
> in, scan it for links, and strip them.

It doesn't show up in the TextArea.getText - which shows the
stripped text. So what happens is if I save the textarea content
to disk & load it next time there are no links - this leads to
a very confusing state for the user.

Michael Ash wrote:
> In comp.sys.mac.programmer.misc cpprogrammer <(E-Mail Removed)>
> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Only when I paste it to awt.TextArea do the links become active.
>>>> Even there, when I do TextArea.getText, I get plain text, without
>>>> the links & the formatting.
>>>>
>>>> Why is Apple JVM's implementation of TextArea so non-standard
>>>> & going against it's own docs - I don't even find this non-standard
>>>> behaviour in the Microsoft 1.1. JVM.
>>>
>>> I know nothing about Java, but it wouldn't surprise me if there was
>>> a certain amount of leeway allowed in the standard when implementing
>>> these things, and so including copied links was perfectly allowed.
>>
>> I doubt it, especially, when both Sun & Apple's java docs say clearly
>> that TextArea is only for plain text.
>
> Ah, that's my ignorace showing, my mistake. In that case it's
> definitely a bug, and you should file it at
> http://bugreport.apple.com .

Will do.

>
>>> If
>>> you want to get rid of them, perhaps you can watch for text coming
>>> in, scan it for links, and strip them.
>>
>> It doesn't show up in the TextArea.getText - which shows the
>> stripped text. So what happens is if I save the textarea content
>> to disk & load it next time there are no links - this leads to
>> a very confusing state for the user.
>
> Can you do the equivalent sort of action (getting the text and then
> setting it) after every paste? It seems like that sort of workaround
> should eliminate the links and then you're mostly ok, even if it is
> ugly code-wise.

I tried it, but then I lose the undo/redo history in the text area, so that
isn't a reasonable work around for me. Plus, it makes the textarea
flicker a lot.