[Tex/LaTex] Are there any (La)TeX editors that accept pasting rich text

copy/pasteeditors

If I copy text to the clipboard from a PDF file, web page, email, or Word document and then paste it to Word or Thunderbird, it is recognized as rich text and converted to Word's or Thunderbird's native format. Does anyone know of a LaTeX GUI (editor) that can do the same?

For example, if I copy "Do this now!!!" from this webpage and paste it into my favorite LaTeX editor, it should become Do \emph{this} \textbf{now!!!}. But all the LaTeX editors I've ever tried will handle pastes as plain text.

Addendum: There's nothing technically difficult about accepting some rich text features from pastes. Applications put objects on the clipboard in multiple formats, and the receiving application can choose a format it can handle. Any editor could request HTML and map all sorts of structured mark-up to LaTeX, from bold or centering to hyperlinks, to section headings and table structure, etc. Is there really no LaTeX editor that goes to the trouble?

Best Answer

LaTeX is build upon ASCII. What you are asking is a feature of the WYSIWYG world converted into the ASCII world.

But the ASCII world decided for another approach: There are converters from WYSIWYG to LaTeX. One mighty software is LibreOffice and its addon "writer2latex". You can throw RTF, *.doc or whatever into the writer and export it as LaTeX. If Libreoffice is not capable enough, because the RTF-file uses features not supported by the writer, then you are in trouble. But for italics and the like, this is the easiest way.

Edit 1.

OP comments (see below):

Keks, I am asking for nothing of the sort. I am asking for a standard feature of the GUI world that is sadly missing from LaTeX GUIs. I don't want bold text to look bold in my editor-- but it should become \textbf{text}.

I understand that. But what you ask for is exactly that kind of background changes people very often hate. They copy text from somewhere and don't want the software to imitate sense by providing whatever layout feature. They just want the text. And if they need more, they go for the converter.

One of the best feature of editors is not to behave like Word!

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] How to make listings code indentation remain unchanged when copied from PDF

To prevent random spaces when copying the text from a listing, you need to use

\lstset{columns=flexible}

But you will now note that the text is not neatly aligned anymore; to solve this, you need to also use

\lstset{keepspaces=true}

This will not solve your problem with spaces disappearing at the beginning of lines when copying. The following hack will produce visible spaces and then make them invisible by coloring them in the background color:

\makeatletter
\def\lst@outputspace{{\ifx\lst@bkgcolor\empty\color{white}\else\lst@bkgcolor\fi\lst@visiblespace}}
\makeatother

This hack is not perfect, however, as the typesetted character is really a visible space, not a space (so searching the pdf for char line will not work) and some PDF readers (like Mac's preview) will copy a visible space. It works under Acrobat Reader and it's extremely pleasant to be able to quickly copy/paste code without problem (perhaps the problem can be circumvented by writing direct PDF code to tell that it's a space, I've never had the time to try). It might also not work with all typewriter fonts.

Here's the full code of your example:

\documentclass[12pt,oneside]{memoir}

\usepackage{listings}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{textcomp}

\definecolor{codebg}{HTML}{EEEEEE}
\definecolor{codeframe}{HTML}{CCCCCC}

\lstset{language=Awk}
\lstset{backgroundcolor=\color{codebg}}
\lstset{frame=single}
\lstset{framesep=10pt}
\lstset{rulecolor=\color{codeframe}}
\lstset{upquote=true}
\lstset{basicstyle=\ttfamily}
\lstset{showstringspaces=false}

\lstset{columns=flexible}
\lstset{keepspaces=true}
\makeatletter
\def\lst@outputspace{{\ifx\lst@bkgcolor\empty\color{white}\else\lst@bkgcolor\fi\lst@visiblespace}}
\makeatother

\begin{document}

This code example prints out all users on your system:

\begin{lstlisting}[language=c]
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>

#define MAX_LINE_LEN 1024

int main() {
    char line[MAX_LINE_LEN];
    FILE *in = fopen("/etc/passwd", "r");
    if (!in) exit(EXIT_FAILURE);

    while (fgets(line, MAX_LINE_LEN, in) != NULL) {
        char *sep = strchr(line, ':');
        if (!sep) exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
        *sep = '\0';
        printf("%s\n", line);
    }
    fclose(in);
    return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}
\end{lstlisting}

\end{document}

[Tex/LaTex] I just want to have the text in the pdf the same way I have it in the editor

The listings package also allows for setting content verbatim. Here's an example, using language=TeX (which should be fine if you have plain text):

enter image description here

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{listings}% http://ctan.org/pkg/listings
\begin{document}
\begin{lstlisting}[language=TeX]
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur 
adipiscing elit. Fusce pulvinar risus 
eu neque porttitor a ultrices magna 
malesuada. Mauris ullamcorper, elit at 
euismod fermentum, mi velit imperdiet 
est, in auctor orci lorem eu velit. 
Integer venenatis accumsan mollis. Cras 
in eros metus, id euismod ante. Class 
aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora 
torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos 
himenaeos. Vivamus nisl tortor, eleifend 
at vestibulum sit amet, scelerisque 
a lacus. Aenean tempus nibh eu ante 
fringilla laoreet. Pellentesque et diam 
sem, sed venenatis turpis. Aenean ac 
euismod dui. Vivamus faucibus elit non 
dolor tincidunt non pulvinar felis 
sagittis. Mauris mi massa, malesuada id 
vestibulum et, tincidunt ac nibh. 
Donec in orci eros, eu accumsan odio. 
Curabitur ipsum nunc, dictum vitae 
faucibus non, aliquet quis leo. Nullam 
nisi diam, rhoncus sagittis semper non, 
pharetra et eros. Etiam a metus nulla, non 
egestas leo.
\end{lstlisting}
\end{document}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] How to make listings code indentation remain unchanged when copied from PDF

[Tex/LaTex] I just want to have the text in the pdf the same way I have it in the editor

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