[Idea discussion] Bold/Italic format/paste mechanics for wysiwyg input fields

[galkinvv]

Some apps with text entry allows formattied input bold, italic, monospace. I do NOT mean the pseudo-bold unciode trick for latin symboils, I mean real formatting. Like Browser-based inputs and Telegram (I suppose much more, I'm not using many apps).

The good news is that those apps supporting formatted paste.
So given a clipboard access the application can implement change format as "cut, adjust clipboard, paste with new formatting, retore previsous clipboard contents"

Maybe, it would be useful such feature as "make bold"/"make nonospace"/"make italic" buttons.

I have no finalized vision of this idea, this issue just created to share the idea expecting further thoughts from users seeking for similar feature.

[Spike-from-NH]

This is the function of a text editor, not a keyboard. Highlighting commands differ among text editors—even more so when you are editing markup/markdown where the words in your file are not highlighted until submitted to a website like Wikipedia.

However, if you have chosen a text editor, I believe Unexpected will eventually let you define a key to perform: ① Start bold, ② End bold, ③ Back up before ② so you can type the text to be bolded.

[galkinvv]

In short: the clipboard serialization of formatting looks to be editor-independent.

As a proof I prepared this text with bold and italic in Telegram, select-all and copied it via Unexpected keyboard  buttons, then pasted in browser wysiwyg markdown editor    with keyboards paste button. Then switched  and submit this comment - the formatting is kept

So the serialization of the formatting in the clipboard is editor-independent (maybe html, I'm not experienced in Android APIs). And I assume keyboard has the ability to inspect and adjust this clipboard content - and this can be used to implement the discussed feature

ScreenRecording_20250205_040043.mp4

[galkinvv]

The above example shows it for bold/ialic, unffortunately does not work for monospace, so adjusting title.

The overall idea is only about apps/sites having wysiwyg editors.

Markdown inputs like in Github comments or reddit app does not need such tricks. May have some other tricks, like macro insertion, but this can be just typed and is more like advanced macros like "wrap selection in **" - it may be useful but independent feature (so is not covered by the idea for formatting shortcuts for wysiwyg editors)