Formatted export should only copy the rendered Markdown, not theme

🌟Features
#1

Steps to reproduce

Starting from scratch, what are the steps to make the bug happen? The fewer the steps, the better.

Enable Dark theme

Create any item, for example test markdown item
Copy output from Export → Formatted
Paste e.g. in Pages

Expected result

What do you expect to see after carrying out the steps above?

Pages:

image
image942Ă—106 13.1 KB

Actual result

Instead of the expected result, what happened?

Pages:

image
image1152Ă—218 18.8 KB

Word:

image
image1416Ă—272 35.8 KB

Environment

Which operating system are you using? Which browser are you using? If you’re using a desktop or mobile app, what’s the version number of Dynalist?

Dynalist for macOS 1.2.0

#2

It’s up to you to paste without formatting with the “merge formatting” option in MS Word.

I tried copying from a dark website (I tried the Discord homepage), and I get this:

image
image947Ă—362 10.2 KB

The “merge formatting” option fixed it.

So from my understanding it’s a browser default behavior, not a bug.

#3

Ah well, I get what’s the problem. Copying styles apparently is the default behaviour in Chromium but isn’t in Firefox which I’m mainly using, so it struck me off as a bug.

Consider it a feature request then, albeit a very minor priority one :slight_smile: it seems to me that such behaviour is way more sensible in the context of an outliner app, hardly anybody means to copy Dynalist theme with their bullets.

#4

Then it could be that Chromium tries to calculate all the styles so that it will look the same when you copy paste to Word. For example, we didn’t specifically set the background color of those exported items to be black, but Chromium copied it as so because the popup is black… Firefox is smarter at that I think.

With merge formatting or the usage of Ctrl+Shift+V (paste without formatting), I think most problems can be solved. Thanks for the feature request though! :slight_smile:

#5

I found this thread because I have been having this problem. I use the dark theme and am on ChromeOS at the moment but I believe it is the same on windows and Chrome browser, which is what I normally use.

  • When I export and paste into a document (I mostly use Google Docs) I receive an unhelpful dark background to the text pasted.
  • If I then try clearing the formatting I lose all bold / italic etc
  • If I paste-without-formatting (ctrl-shift-v) I lose my bullets and indents as well
  • There doesn’t appear to be an equivalent to merge formatting (unless it is the same as without-formatting) in google docs

However, if I select and copy the bullets instead of exporting I can paste without the black background. And it retains bold and italic.

I would still very much prefer it if the theme was not copied when exporting as there are annoying issues with having to open all the bullets and then select what you need and then collapse to where you were. And I’m sure I will often forget to do it this way.
But this is a workaround.

#6

+1, discovered the same issue.

Intent: Export (via copy+Paste) a page to a Google Doc using Chrome.

Behavior: Dynalist in Dark mode, the pasted text pasted to the doc white.

Workaround: Downloaded in HTML, re-opened in Chrome, pasted from there.

#7

That’s how all websites in Chrome work. Any website you copy from, and paste into GMail or a GDoc, will carry along the HTML formatting and colors by default. There are often more than one styles that get copied and pasted, including plain text. To paste that, switch to the “Paste Unformatted” hotkey in your operating system. To see all of the flavors in your clipboard, this tool is useful: https://dynalist.io/clipboard