Processing pasted tabs

anon39478654 · July 6, 2021, 3:15pm

I have ‘Indent Unit’ set to 4 in Inkdrop and TAB is entered as Space x 4.

However, when I copy and paste a code snippet from another editor, the tab does not expand into a space, but remains \t, which is Space x 2.

I have to readjust the indentation in Inkdrop every time.

I think it would be appropriate if pasted tabs were also rendered according to the ‘Indent Unit’.

Info

Platform: (Windows)
Platform version: (10)
App Version: (5.3.1)

Reproduce

Copy and paste code or documents that contain tabs.

craftzdog · July 7, 2021, 8:18am

Hey Avis,

Let me answer after the paternity break!

anon39478654 · July 7, 2021, 9:59am

Congratulations on that!
I’m not in a hurry, so it’s okay.

craftzdog · July 21, 2021, 1:54am

CodeMirror has an option tabSize: https://codemirror.net/doc/manual.html#option_tabSize
So, it’d be nice to support it instead of converting tabs into spaces.

anon39478654 · August 6, 2021, 3:51pm

Thank you for your answer.
Do you have any plans to support this in inkdrop?

craftzdog · August 9, 2021, 2:16am

I’m currently working on the mobile app.
You can specify it with init.js like so:

inkdrop.onEditorLoad(() => {
  var cm = inkdrop.getActiveEditorOrThrowError().cm
  cm.setOption('tabSize', 2)
})

anon39478654 · August 12, 2021, 4:14am

Thanks, that was very helpful.
I am now able to adjust the CodeMirror settings.

I no longer need to rework the snippet after I put it up.

However, it doesn’t match the settings in Inkdrop, so hopefully this will be improved someday.

craftzdog · August 17, 2021, 4:03am

Yes, it’ll be supported in the next release!

craftzdog · September 2, 2021, 5:28am

It’s now supported in v5.4.0

J_N · May 12, 2025, 3:25pm

I’m still noticing, when pasting from other sources that have tab-indented text (like Logseq and some other outliners), I get messed-up indentation in Inkdrop.

Is there something I can do inside Inkdrop to handle pasting of these tab-indented sources, or do I have to manually switch out tabs for double spaces before pasting? My current tab size/indent unit is 4, but switching that out to 2 doesn’t make a difference.

Logseq, Sublime, Inkdrop (in order):

craftzdog · May 13, 2025, 1:28am

@J_N
Inkdrop does not convert tabs into spaces when pasting.
Do you mean changing the tab size does not work?
Why does the second line start with - - and why does the line “A” not have a dash? How do you paste it?

J_N · May 13, 2025, 12:18pm

I don’t know

This is the behaviour I’m seeing, and it seems to vary with apps I’m pasting from. There seems to be a difference between ⌘C + ⌘V pasting and Pasting as plain text ⌥⇧⌘V.

TextEdit/Sublime

- Point A
	- Subpoint A
		- Sub-subpoint A
- Point B
	- Subpoint B
		- Sub-subpoint B

Nothing fancy, just tab-indented text, ends up in Inkdrop like this:

There’s some kind of invisible indentation happening because a) the syntax colour is different for every line, and b) the dashes aren’t perfectly aligned. Preview seems to render correctly.

Logseq
If I do Paste as plain text ⌥⇧⌘V, I end up with the same result, but if I simply do ⌘C + ⌘V, then I end up with this:

Screenshot 2025-05-13 at 14.06.321352×428 59.6 KB

However, this is where things get weird, if I ⌘C + ⌘V just Point A and its children, I get this:

All the dashes you see here are indented by 2 spaces, even though my settings in Inkdrop are Indent unit:4 and Tab size: 4.

Bottom line is, no matter what I do, I can’t seem to get tab-indented text into Inkdrop correctly. I’m guessing for now, manually changing tabs to spaces is the only option?

craftzdog · May 14, 2025, 2:07am

@J_N, thanks for the detailed explanation.
The corrupt indent is due to a feature to align items to the bullets like this:

But it doesn’t work well with tab-indented lists.

Regarding pasting from Logseq, it copies the list as plain text and HTML. When pressing ⌘V, it tries to convert the HTML into Markdown but the HTML structure is not identical to the original list structure. So, that’s why it only works properly with ⌥⇧⌘V, which pastes plain text from the clipboard.

Unfortunately, the library for converting HTML to MD does not support specifying the indent size.

Yeah, I think the app should convert tab indentations to spaces when pasting plain text.
Thanks again for the feedback!

craftzdog · May 14, 2025, 5:12am

@J_N Can you please try this patch? https://d3ip0rje8grhnl.cloudfront.net/v5.11.4/Inkdrop-5.11.4-arm64-Mac.zip
When pasting multiline plain text, it should replace tabs with spaces. It respects the tab size config.

J_N · May 14, 2025, 8:00am

I’ve given this a spin, here’s what I find:

Plain text
- Tabs convert correctly to whatever config I have set for indentation (I’ve tried changing from 4 to 2 and back again, and it looks like it works), so this is good.
HTML
- still uses 2 spaces, so consistent behaviour with what you’ve explained about HTML → MD.
Rich text
- Still getting double dashes when pasting from rich text, i.e. from Apple Notes (see below).
- If I paste rich text with ⌥⇧⌘V, I’ll get varied results depending on source application, but I guess that’s a different issue.

Apple Notes, rich text:

The main takeaway is that tab-indented plain text now seems to transfer correctly, which is a win

craftzdog · May 15, 2025, 5:32am

@J_N Thanks for checking it out!
Yes, you are correct. Seems like Apple Notes has the same issue with Logseq.
You copy HTML like this:

<ul class="ul1">
   <li class="li1"><span class="s1"></span>what about notes</li>
   <ul class="ul1">
      <li class="li1"><span class="s1"></span>how does formatting look <b>here</b></li>
   </ul>
   <li class="li1"><span class="s1"></span>does it copy <a href="https://www.inkdrop.app/">links</a>?</li>
   <ul class="ul1">
      <li class="li1"><span class="s2"></span><i>italics</i>?</li>
   </ul>
</ul>

The child ul is directly under the parent ul, which is actually incorrect and not supported by the converter library.

Well, I guess it’s good to roll this patch out. Thanks again!

craftzdog · May 19, 2025, 2:05am

Landed in v5.11.4 Thanks again for your feedback!