Just as HyperCard's FIND command has certain variations -- FIND 
INTERNATIONAL, and FIND CHARS, and FIND WORDS, and so on -- I think we could 
do worse than give a variant or two to the COPY command:

   COPY FROM [container1] TO [container2]: The standard, ASCII-only variant.
   COPY TEXT FROM [container1] TO [container2]: Optional form of the standard 
variant.
   COPY RAWTEXT FROM [container1] TO [container2]: Same as above, different 
variant.
   COPY STYLEDTEXT FROM [container1] TO [container2]: The enhanced, 
style-preserving variant.
   COPY FANCYTEXT FROM [container1] TO [container2]: Another style-preserving 
variant.

   While I'm on a roll, here's another variant that might be useful:

   COPY STYLES FROM [container1] TO [container2]: This one copies *only* the 
text-style information from [container1], rather like the PASTE SPECIAL 
command in Excel and other spreadsheets. If the text in [container1] has more 
than one specific textstyle within it (i.e. some plain text, some bold, some 
italic), I'd recommend that we just take the textStyle info from the FIRST 
character in [container1].

   As ever, all comments are welcome...

Reply via email to