How can I paste space-formatted tables in Lync without losing the formatting?

Multiple spaces are replaced by a single space character. Too bad when doing things as such:

|#|Name     |
|-+---------|
|1|John Paul|
|2|John     |
|3|Robert   |
|4|Jimmy    |

Edit: This kind of output is generated (via telnet) by code of mine, so I can change it.

Gabriel

Posted 2012-08-08T13:57:47.923

Reputation: 364

With slightly more work, you could simply render it as an image with http://ditaa.org/ditaa/ Just an idea, if nothing else works ;)

– Der Hochstapler – 2012-08-20T17:59:00.927

Then I send ASCII-art-render the image to send it via telnet (= – Gabriel – 2012-08-27T13:06:09.307

Seems like Lynch tries to be smart, and doesn't let people choose how pasting should work. See this for example on how Lynch preserve too much of the original copy...

– awe – 2012-08-27T13:19:23.310

Answers

You could try replacing the spaces with non breaking spaces. A simple way to get a non breaking space is holding 'Alt' and typing '255'.
I am not entirely sure if all search&replace dialogues work with that, maybe you need to use an additional editor.

Michael K

Posted 2012-08-08T13:57:47.923

Reputation: 3 308

I'd have to set the output of the program where I copy from from ' ' to \255. That seems like less pain when copy/pasting, but I wonder how word processors, outlook and other stuff will behave. Will try it before giving the thumbs up (: – Gabriel – 2012-08-27T12:23:03.180

Ok, when compiling, VStudio transforms ' 's (ALT-255) and '\255's into 0xA0 which is the ISO/IEC 8859 code for non-breaking space. But then windows shows it as the ascii 'á'. I couldn't find how to prevent VS to do it, so I had to use (char)255 instead. Then it worked. – Gabriel – 2012-08-27T13:03:05.317

If you go through a word processor that uses formatted text, and paste it there (like MS Word). Then set the font to "Courier New", line/paragraph spacing to 0, and then copy it into Lynch.

It seems like Lynch removes the extra spaces when the copied text is plain text, but if the copied text is formatted, it keeps everything as the original.

In this case, you have the alternative to make it as a table in Word, and copy the entire table. This will work since Lynch will support table display with all formatting. This way, you can have a nice font as well (no need for mono-space font).

awe

Posted 2012-08-08T13:57:47.923

Reputation: 1 009

It works \o/ but the double copy/pasting and launching the word processor are a pain /: – Gabriel – 2012-08-27T12:25:40.040