Strange Copy&Paste behaviour in Calc under Linux/xfce

[mezzoforte]

After some recent upgrades (both OS and LibreOffice version), I find the Copy&Paste functionality of Calc has changed to always first paste values and copy formulas only on second try.

Example:
Cell A1 contains value 10
Cell B1 contains formula =A1, displays 10
Cell A2 contains value 55

Now if I mark cell B1, press Ctrl-C, then go to cell B2 and press Ctrl-V, I would expect cell B2 to contain formula =A2 and display 55. However it contains and displays 10. Even more funny, if I repeat the same (mark cell B1, press Ctrl-C again, mark cell B2, press Ctrl-V), it copies the formula and cell B2 displays 55. Maybe worth noting, that the first paste takes a lot longer (almost a second), whereas the second paste is instant.

Is the “intelligent I-know-better-than-you” paste a new feature? Can I turn it off?

And I do know about pulling that little marker at the edge of the cell or using Paste Special, this does not change that I would like Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V to work like it has always worked before and how it works in Excel (i.e. copy formulas and format by default)

LibreOffce version:
Version: 25.8.3.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 580(Build:2)
CPU threads: 8; OS: Linux 6.8; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: x11
Locale: de-DE (en_GB.utf8); UI: en-US
Ubuntu package version: 4:25.8.3-0ubuntu0.25.10.1
Calc: CL threaded

Thanks for any help.

[Villeroy]

@mezzoforte

Cell A2 contains value 55

Now if I mark cell A2, press Ctrl-C, then go to cell B2 and press Ctrl-V,

then I copy cell value 55 to B2.
ask132685.ods (16.3 KB)

[mezzoforte]

Stupid me mixing up rows and columns in the text. It is corrected now, the use-case is of course to copy B1 to B2, not A2 to B2.

[mikekaganski]

There is no such “intelligent I-know-better-than-you” feature in Calc; in fact, our code always prefers to use “own” data object from clipboard (i.e., if you copied a cell to clipboard, there will be a “cell object” there, as well as “value text”, and we prefer “cell object”, which would provide a formula, not static data). But there could be an interaction of some (new? you mentioned OS upgrade) clipboard manager. If it detects a change, and modifies the clipboard somehow, then it could destroy the “own” object from the clipboard (keeping only static data there), and Calc would be unable to paste intelligently.

Unfortunately, the real-life implementations of clipboard managers are highly problematic everywhere. They are usually created as separate programs, doing very naive things when they detect changes; and the things they do are often destructive for any non-trivial clipboard content. See e.g. https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-workspace/-/merge_requests/5296#note_1151732, where a Klipper maintainer made a fix for a Klipper’s LibreOffice-related bug, but was unsure if that’s a right thing to do - and we had a discussion explaining the specifics of some corner case of Clipboard handling. Of course, that was a completely different thing; but I just wanted to show, that an external entity (clipboard manager) can affect it heavily.

[mezzoforte]

Thanks for the extensive reply, this makes a lot of sense (except for the fact that the clipboard content gets modified on the first copy but not on the second one…).
I guess I have to dig into my desktop environment then, funny thing is that xfce-clipman, the clipboard manager for xfce, is not even running on my system.

I take it, there is no option to tell openoffice to always use internal clipboard only (disable cross-application copy/paste)?

[mikekaganski]

@mezzoforte

except for the fact that the clipboard content gets modified on the first copy but not on the second one…

if your clipboard manager detects that the update didn’t change content, it could skip something. But that’s just one possibility.

@mezzoforte

I take it, there is no option to tell openoffice to always use internal clipboard only (disable cross-application copy/paste)?

We have it for our unit testing. But I’m not sure if it’s possible to use it outside of the unit-testing; and if possible, if it won’t affect other things.

I need to check the code, will update a bit later.
So, the code tests if LO_RUNNING_UNIT_TEST or LO_RUNNING_UI_TEST environment variables are set, to decide to use internal-only “dummy” clipboard, or the system one. Unfortunately, we have many places in the code, which check that; so it would not only disallow pasting from outside into LibreOffice (!), but also have other unexpected changes in behavior.

[sokol92]

@mezzoforte

Now if I mark cell B1, press Ctrl-C, then go to cell B2 and press Ctrl-V,

You can experiment and instead of Ctrl + V, click on the down arrow next to the corresponding button and select a specific clipboard format.