Always prioritize formatted text when content is identical

[sharkweek]

What's your idea?

This stems from issue #48.

How does this improve your experience?

I actually think the simplest way to address the issue of juggling formatted and unformatted text entries with identical content would be to always prioritize the formatted version and discard non-formatted versions when similar formatted text is copied. If a similar non-formatted item is copied, the formatted one would just float to the top. The user can always paste plain text from formatted text, but not vice versa.

As a reference, my use case for this is primarily from copying things among Microsoft Office applications. Copying the text from the formula bar in Excel, for example, will copy plain text, but copying the cell will copy the text with the formatting. When pasting into another application such as PowerPoint, formatted vs. unformatted text can have a very different behavior depending on which type of object you are pasting into. This is a very specific example, but I think it's quite common with MS Office users.

Visual Proposal (optional)

No response

Philosophy Checklist

• This idea maintains the modern UI and avoids 'heavy' designs.
• It contributes to a simple and intuitive experience.

Inspiration (optional)

Ditto allows for multiple copies of text in different formats and renders the formatting of the items to indicate the distinction between them. I think the overhead for implementing something similar would be overkill and not conform to the "light" design of CopyPaste, but it does address the example case described above.

[rgdevment]

Thanks for the proposal, and especially for the Office example — it helps far more than an abstract description.

One clarification first: no duplicate entries are created. Deduplication is by (content, type), so copying the same text with and without formatting reactivates the same item and floats it to the top. What was actually happening is that the item discarded its RTF/HTML once the plain copy came in — a deliberate choice at the time (#53), based on the idea that the card should mirror your last copy.

Your argument convinced me, and while revisiting it I went a bit further than you asked: instead of an opt-in setting, the discard is gone entirely.

The reasoning: rich text contains the plain text, not the other way around. "Paste as plain text" already serves the unstyled version at paste time without touching what's stored. Dropping the formatting layer destroyed the superset to keep the subset — and left the very button that served that view with nothing to do. On top of that, re-copying as plain is almost never an instruction to forget the formatting; it usually just means you copied from somewhere else. I was treating an accident as a command.

What doesn't change: if the new copy brings its own styles, it always replaces the stored ones. And I won't be adding "similar" matching — deduplication is exact, and anything fuzzy would bring silent false positives. Same for the Ditto model: I agree it would be overkill for CopyPaste's design.

Two caveats on your case: an Excel cell copies the displayed value while the formula bar copies the raw content, so with number formatting or formulas the text differs and they'll remain separate items. And this applies going forward only — items that already lost their formatting won't get it back.

⚠️ Honest disclaimer: this isn't a flow I use myself, so I haven't tested it thoroughly in real-world scenarios. I'd really appreciate your feedback once you have it in your hands.

Coming soon in v2.10.0.

[sharkweek]

Thanks for this! I'll definitely keep testing and let you know if anything new comes of it.