Should markdown url smart paste be disabled if the user hasn't made a selection?

[mjbvz]

1. Copy http://example.com
2. Paste into a md file without any making any selection

Bug
Currently this inserts a markdown link. However this is different from what GitHub does. Github seems to only create a link if you have a selection

We should at least think about:

• Matching GitHub's behavior
• Adding a setting that lets us match GitHub's behavior

[mjbvz]

Last iteration I think @isidorn had another related idea: disabling smart paste if you are inside of a word #186289

[isidorn]

I agree we should think about selection + smart paste. It boils down to - how often do users want to have a URL in markdown as a full https link? If the answer is > 30% then I think we should only have smart paste on selection.
To get a sense for this question - we could analyse top markdown repos on GitHub and see how often is a http link in Markdown without it being rendered as a markdown link.

As for disabling smart paste if in a word - I still think this makes sense. I like that we have disable smart paste if in a link - thanks for that!

[af4jm]

I'm seeing that same behavior, even though I have "markdown.editor.pasteUrlAsFormattedLink.enabled": "never" in my settings... which is obviously getting ignored... if I paste a link at [test](|) (where | marks the cursor position), I also get the smart link Sorry, found it set to true in the folder settings that was overriding the Profile setting, after changing that I'm seeing the feature behave as documented

[lgarron]

This also keeps tripping me up. I assumed I had chosen a bad configuration, but it sounds like this actually can't be configured easily. Both "always" and "smart" will try to create linked text, making it annoying to paste a URL directly.

I also agree that GitHub behaviour is much more practical, and it would also be nice for the behaviour match for those of us who spend most of our programming time in VS Code and GitHub.

If anyone has a combination of shortcuts and settings that matches GitHub, I'd love to know. Else, I'd love to learn a way to set ⇧⌘V to paste the link without formatting.

[lgarron]

Else, I'd love to learn a way to set ⇧⌘V to paste the link without formatting.

Okay, I figured out how to do this:

// keybindings.json
[
  // Disable existing ⇧⌘V shortcuts — modify to taste
  {
    "key": "shift+cmd+v",
    "command": "-notebook.cell.pasteAbove",
    "when": "notebookEditorFocused && !inputFocus"
  },
  {
    "key": "shift+cmd+v",
    "command": "-markdown.showPreview",
    "when": "!notebookEditorFocused && editorLangId == 'markdown'"
  },
  // Enable ⌥⌘V for plain text paste
  {
    "key": "shift+cmd+v",
    "command": "editor.action.pasteAs",
    "args": {
      "id": "text"
    },
    "when": "editorLangId == 'markdown'"
  }
]

In theory it should be possible to use editorHasSelection to match GitHub's behaviour, but the following doesn't seem to work:

[
  {
    "key": "shift+v",
    "command": "editor.action.pasteAs",
    "args": {
      "id": "text"
    },
    "when": "!editorHasSelection && editorLangId == 'markdown'"
  }
]

The next approach would be to trigger "smart" paste only when editorHasSelection, but I haven't figured out a way to do that yet.

[lgarron]

The next approach would be to trigger "smart" paste only when editorHasSelection, but I haven't figured out a way to do that yet.

Okay, I think I've got it:

// keybindings.json
[
  {
    "key": "cmd+v",
    "command": "editor.action.pasteAs",
    "args": {
      "id": "text"
    },
    "when": "!editorHasSelection && editorLangId == 'markdown'"
  },
  {
    "key": "cmd+v",
    "command": "editor.action.clipboardPasteAction",
    "args": {},
    "when": "editorHasSelection || editorLangId != 'markdown'"
  },
  {
    "key": "cmd+v",
    "command": "-editor.action.clipboardPasteAction"
  }
]

This also seems to work, but I'm not 100% confident about the priority of conflicting conditions:

// keybindings.json
[
  {
    "key": "cmd+v",
    "command": "editor.action.pasteAs",
    "args": {
      "id": "text"
    },
    "when": "!editorHasSelection && editorLangId == 'markdown'"
  },
  {
    "key": "cmd+v",
    "command": "-editor.action.clipboardPasteAction",
    "when": "!editorHasSelection && editorLangId == 'markdown'"
  }
]

But this took over half an hour of experimentation + digging through the VS Code source code and documentation. It also doesn't take into account:

• notebookEditorFocused
• inputFocus / editorTextFocus
• ⇧⌘V to swap the default replacement behaviour with the opposite.

I presume changing the default behaviour would involve adding an early return here, when there is currently no selection:

vscode/extensions/markdown-language-features/src/languageFeatures/copyFiles/pasteUrlProvider.ts

Line 18 in 11bfd76

async provideDocumentPasteEdits(

[lgarron]

• notebookEditorFocused
• inputFocus / editorTextFocus
• ⇧⌘V to swap the default replacement behaviour with the opposite.

Here's a try for a version that takes these into account:

// keybindings.json
[
  {
    "key": "cmd+v",
    "command": "editor.action.pasteAs",
    "args": {
      "id": "text"
    },
    "when": "inputFocus && !editorHasSelection && editorLangId == 'markdown'"
  },
  {
    "key": "cmd+v",
    "command": "-editor.action.clipboardPasteAction",
    "when": "inputFocus && !editorHasSelection && editorLangId == 'markdown'"
  },
  {
    "key": "shift-cmd+v",
    "command": "editor.action.pasteAs",
    "args": {
      "id": "text"
    },
    "when": "inputFocus && editorHasSelection"
  }
]

It avoids clobbering the ⇧⌘V shortcut for notebook.cell.pasteAbove but still has the following issues:

• Incorrect text selection after paste.
• Hardcoded to macOS.

[Alecton4]

Can we rename the current smart option to something like selectionOnly and restore the behavior of the previous smart option? According to this comment, smart now only creates a markdown link if some text is selected beforehand, which I guess is not "smart" enough.

I'm using Markdown to write notes, and reference links to other websites are often used. With the current smart option, I have to 1) type/paste the site title, 2) select the title, and 3) paste URL. But with the previous smart behavior, it's 1) paste URL, 2) press Tab, and 3) type/paste the site title. Selecting is more painful than just pressing Tab especially when lots of links need to be inserted.

[mjbvz]

This is now the default. You can then use the paste widget to switch after the paste has taken place

@Alecton4 Good idea. I think I'll add a new option called smartWithSelection that replaces smart and is the default. Then smart will be a new option that always applies, even for empty selections (names may change)