"Save as HTML" in "Compare Versions" uses "contenteditable" unexpectedly

Question

The “Compare Versions” tool has a “Save as HTML” feature. It can be accessed by clicking on the print icon, and then the “Save as HTML” button.

Confusingly, the HTML produced by this feature uses the contenteditable HTML attribute. The <body> HTML tag looks like this:

<body spellcheck="false" data-gramm="false" contenteditable="true">

This means that when you open the HTML file in a browser, you can click on the text and start typing, and the text will be edited in the browser. The changes are not saved however. If you refresh the page, all the changes are lost.

Could Paratext be fixed so that contenteditable is not included in the exported HTML? It makes the HTML file harder to deal with. For example, I can’t find the “take a screenshot” menu item in Firefox, because it disappears when the text is contenteditable.

Paratext Feb 1, 2022 asked by bit (443 points)
Feb 2, 2022 reshown

3 Answers

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CraigF · Answer 1 · 2022-02-07T23:08:27+0000

Thanks for highlighting this hidden feature! I can see how this could be confusing for some users, and I was going to support your request. However, I also see that it could be useful to be able to export a whole book, and then in the browser delete certain chapters/portions for printing a subset, so I’m not so sure. I haven’t used Firefox’s screenshot feature, but isn’t that a bug/limitation that should be addressed in FF?

bit · Answer 2 · 2022-02-09T10:56:51+0000

Yes, that limitation with the screenshot tool in Firefox is Firefox’s problem. I still would argue that contenteditable shouldn’t be used in this case.

I can see how users might want to delete certain passages before printing the document. That’s a good use-case I didn’t think of. However, I think this would be best done in a document editor, like Microsoft Word, or LibreOffice Writer. The user can copy and paste the passage he/she wants into the word processor and do any modifications there. If the user is encouraged to make modifications in the browser, I think they may expect changes to persist, which they don’t as soon you as you reload the HTML file.

"Save as HTML" in "Compare Versions" uses "contenteditable" unexpectedly

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