Copying Text with Drag & Drop Editing

[EV win10 user 2]

{05/21/19 @ 08:02 EDT}

Evernote's (v6.18.4) drag-and-drop editing does not function for copying (Ctrl-key) versus moving (Shift-key). It always only moves the dragged item no matter which keys are depressed. The plus sign on the copy icon appears when pressing the Ctrl-key, but the item dragged is always just moved and never copied. One must use the very inconvenient method of Ctrl-C to copy then Ctrl-V to paste. These were introduced in 1982 with the IBM PC. Most Windows 10 Apps use true drag-and-drop. Why not modernize Evernote's editing tools to employ true drag-and-drop capability?

 

Note: To understand the correct functioning of Drag & Drop editing, just use Microsoft's WordPad word processor. It functions properly as intended. Even the Search Box in Evernote's 'Search the Community' forum functions properly but not Evernote v6.18.4. Why? Can this be fixed?

[jefito 5,589]

The functionality is not there because it likely was never designed to do it. Note that not  all text editors support drag/drop editing, and ones that do may use different conventions or don't support both edit and copy operations. In other words, there are no hard and fast conventions. This is a feature request; moving to a more appropriate subforum...

[EV win10 user 2]

{05/21/19 @ 11:42 EDT}

 

Thanks for your response. The subject editing functionality was included in past versions of Evernote. I consider its removal a coding error--a Bug. How many millions around the world use Microsoft applications. Microsoft's editing functionality could be considered to be a 'Standard' based on the numbers of its users. Since all of the applications in Microsoft Office Professional use the subject functionality and Microsoft owns Windows 10, the name of this forum, my description of a Bug seems to me to be totally appropriate here. As stated previously, even Evernote's 'Search the Community' forum Search Box uses this 'Standard.' Try it yourself--copy (Ctrl-key) with drag & drop in the Search Box.

 

If you have been an Evernote user for any length of time, you would know that past revisions have mistakenly deleted good, solid working code. Eventually, the bugs were realized and fixed. Here, I am reporting a Bug to be fixed.

[jefito 5,589]

12 hours ago, EV win10 user said:

The subject editing functionality was included in past versions of Evernote. I consider its removal a coding error--a Bug

Fair enough. I never knew that that was a thing in the Windows product; it's not really part of my use case. Removal may indeed have been inadvertent (so a bug, yes: contravention of design/spec, or unintended behavior) or intentional if it was somehow problematic (which would then be a design decision, not a bug, even if it removed prior functionality) or not directly supported in the new editor framework (not a bug either, though maybe a feature awaiting eventual implementation, so a prioritization issue). Hard to know for sure unless an Evernote staffer were to comment. No question that it's inconvenient to folks who've use this type of facility, though.

12 hours ago, EV win10 user said:

How many millions around the world use Microsoft applications. Microsoft's editing functionality could be considered to be a 'Standard' based on the numbers of its users.

Indeed; however one of the MS applications I use a lot is Visual Studio, has drag/drop editing as an option (turned off in my case: it's generally too slow for my purposes; I do much better with keyboard). The MS application NotePad doesn't have it at all. WordPad does,  though, so that's something, but Microsoft doesn't make standards for other applications, or when they do, they can't/don't generally enforce them. Not saying that de facto standards aren't useful, but as before, there are any number of examples of applications that don't support this one in exactly the same way. That being said, the drag/drop editing behavior is consistent with Explorer file system drag/drop behavior (drag = move, Ctrl+drag = copy), so that does strengthen that particular metaphor.

12 hours ago, EV win10 user said:

If you have been an Evernote user for any length of time, you would know that past revisions have mistakenly deleted good, solid working code. Eventually, the bugs were realized and fixed. Here, I am reporting a Bug to be fixed.

I first started using Evernote in earnest in 2008, and have ever since. I think that's a pretty good length of time. I've seen most of the iterations, from the misbegotten timeline version, through the fraught C# conversion, and on into the present. Over that time, I've seen bugs and useful features alike come and go in Evernote,  but yes, bugs still exist to this day, as do features that never should have been. In my book, bugs and feature requests are much the same stuff anyhow: potential development work that needs to be recognized, understood, prioritized and possibly implemented. Moving this to the Windows feature request forum allows other users to upvote the bugfix/feature request, possibly giving Evernote some food for at least prioritization purposes, if not awareness of the regression itself.

Anyhow, tomato, tomahto, ice cream, gelato: I do hope for your sake and that of other drag&dropppers that it's brought back, whatever it is (I upvoted it). Cheers.

[EV win10 user 2]

jefito,

I appreciate your comments. Thanks for the upvote. Happy Editing!