pasting to and from Microsoft Word

[slindstrom]

I have several apps I've written to parse and reformat text, extract data from it and database the results. They all have steps that call for copying and pasting text from MS Word to a LiveCode field, and the reverse. One problem, which did not exist prior to LiveCode 5 (was OK in RunRev), is that some characters disappear in a Word-to-LiveCode copy and paste. The two that cause my parsers huge trouble are the em-dash — and the en-dash –. I've tried writing a workaround "paste" function that traps for these characters in the clipboardData and uses numToChar to replace them with versions that will show up in the LiveCode field. Unfortunately, the em-dash and en-dash are invisible to LiveCode even in the clipboardData.

There is also a significant problem in copying and pasting from a LiveCode field TO Word. All tabs morph into underscores. I realize this problem is arguably on Microsoft... but it's a major headache.

The only workaround for either problem is to paste into TextEdit, copy from TextEdit and then paste into a LiveCode field or Word doc (depending on the direction of the copy and paste). These glitches exist whether the app is running in the IDE or as a standalone. They obviously hamper distribution of standalones; I have to tell anybody who'll use the apps to use the very inconvenient TextEdit workaround.

Is there a way to program around these problems? Is there any chance they'll be fixed in a future LiveCode release? Bear in mind that these problems did not occur with earlier RunRev versions.

I've posted this here in the Mac OS forum because that's the platform I'm using, but I have tested and the problem exists also with the Windows standalone versions of these apps. Help!

Thanks in advance,

Sieg Lindstrom