GNU bug report logs - #19471
Can't copy display-string text

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From: "Kelly Dean" <kelly <at> prtime.org>
To: 19471 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#19471: Emacs can't copy text
Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 09:53:52 +0000

Do:
C-h i g (elisp)translation keymaps RET
C-HOME C-SPACE DOWN M-w
C-x b foo RET C-y

What it looks like you copied is ⌜(elisp)Top > Keymaps > Translation Keymaps⌝. But when you paste it, you instead get
⌜File: elisp.info,  Node: Translation Keymaps,  Next: Key Binding Commands,  Prev: Remapping Commands,  Up: Keymaps⌝

I suppose that's rational in some twisted sense, but it's unreasonable user-unfriendliness for a text editor.
See my message ⌜Re: Correspondence between web-pages and Info-pages⌝ in emacs-devel for why this matters.

I tried switching the buffer to fundamental mode in order to copy the text, but that didn't solve the problem, so Emacs apparently has some kind of low-level text-mangling voodoo that hijacks kill-ring-save.

Yes, the Info page name is effectively like an HTML page title, and web browsers don't let you copy the title either, at least not without some special effort. But at least web browsers don't mislead you by letting you select the title text and perform an apparently-successful copy operation, which you only discover copied the wrong text when you try to paste it.

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