Word bullet points pasted into UE

slouw · Feb 29, 2016#12016-02-29T01:54+00:00

What are these things known as in UE?
See red box.
This is bulleted text pasted in from Word.
I can see and understand the tabs (in grey) these are not what I am asking about.
Is there a bullet point feature in UE?

Many thanks

MickRC3 · Feb 29, 2016#22016-02-29T14:42+00:00

A "Bullet" is a word processor construct. Like any information there is a byte value to it, along with information the word processor needs. The anchor values match the codes assigned to bullet characters on print wheels or print balls from electric typewriters and early word processors. When you pasted the bullet list into UltraEdit the characters displayed are determined by the character set loaded. If ANSI and not Unicode the characters will most likely be what you have in your example. Any character in the character set can be displayed. A bullet character can be displayed but that does not make a bullet list.

In a word processor, there is a lot more information than a bullet character in a bullet list. There is the indentation, font color, size, stroke and so on. All of that is contained in non-visible data attached to the text. In many cases the overhead exceeds the text.

Text editors don't store extra information with the file. If anything special is done in the format it is done byte by byte within the text. Things like syntax highlighting are done on the fly and are part of the display - not part of the file.

gary_johnson_53 · Feb 29, 2016#32016-02-29T15:06+00:00

Also, it is the font that determines how the character is represented. Look at them in hex or using Search - Character Properties.

Mofi · Feb 29, 2016#42016-02-29T18:31+00:00

slouw, you need to know the difference between a word processor like Microsoft Word for composition, editing, formatting, printing of document files and a text editor like UltraEdit for composition, editing, printing of plain text files.

Document files contain not visible formatting data which define how the text is displayed and printed. Formatting data are font, font size, font style (regular, bold, italic, bold and italic), foreground and background color, bulleted list, numbered list, table, text box, borders, ... Plain text files contain just text, nothing else. All bytes in a plain text file define a character. But bytes in a document file can represent a character or a formatting information. Formatting is not supported by text editors as it is not possible to store in a plain text file formatting data.

Most users think that there is 1 clipboard which all applications support. But that is not true. In real there are multiple clipboards supporting different formats, see the MSDN article Clipboard Formats. So with selecting a block in Microsoft Word and pressing Ctrl+C, Word copies the block to clipboard in various supported formats. It copies the block in a self-defined format supported only by other Microsoft products or just other applications of same Office suite. It copies the block additionally in HTML and in RTF format for those applications supporting pasting from clipboard in HTML or RTF. And Word copies the block also as Unicode and as ANSI text to clipboard.

A text editor like UltraEdit supports multiple clipboard formats. There are of course supported the plain ANSI (CF_TEXT) and Unicode (CF_UNICODETEXT) text formats. But by using Edit - Paste Special - HTML Source or Edit - Paste Special - Raw RTF it is also possible to get pasted into a new file what Microsoft Word copied to clipboard in format HTML and in format RTF. So with one Ctrl+C in MS Word, you can paste at least 4 different versions into 4 different plain text files: Unicode text file, ANSI text file, HTML file, RTF file. The block pasted into a Unicode and into an ANSI file can look identical, but can also differ depending on which characters the text in Word document contains. Unicode characters not available in used ANSI code page are somehow replayed by other characters. The Unicode standard defines the rules for this conversion.

So the block with bulleted lists you have selected and copied to clipboard was by Microsoft Word already converted into a plain text format using Unicode encoding and ANSI encoding with using the code page as defined in Windows region and language settings for non Unicode aware applications. And either the Unicode or the ANSI version of the block in clipboard is inserted into active plain text file by pressing in UltraEdit Ctrl+V depending on encoding used by the active plain text file.

slouw · Mar 02, 2016#52016-03-02T02:45+00:00

Many thanks all informative as always