Copying line-breaks out of PDFs

#1

Hello,

A lot of the work I do in Roam involves note-taking from PDFs, but when I copy a block of text, the line-breaks from the PDF are also copied into Roam. This (obviously) isn’t what I want; and if I paste the same text into Google Docs or Word, the line-breaks aren’t copied. As such, I have to either a. manually remove the line-breaks in Roam; b. paste into Google Docs and copy that text and then paste into Roam; or c. have annoying and badly-formatted quotes in Roam.

Is there a shortcut to paste without the linebreaks? Is there a way to copy without the linebreaks? Can I change my default settings to not paste linebreaks into Roam?

Thanks!

#2

Still needs to be impoved, I agree, see:
https://forum.roamresearch.com/t/line-break-newline-hard-return-copy-paste-behavior/2195

#3

UPDATE - found a solution using Roam42 smart-blocks - Replace new lines with space · Issue #70 · roamhacker/SmartBlocks · GitHub

I would still prefer this to be the default, but this is a good workaround.

#4

There is a universal shortcut to pasting just raw text. On Windows, instead of Ctrl-V, use Shift-Ctrl-V, and there will be no line breaks - or any other formatting for that matter.

#5

I’ve never used Roam on Windows, but on a Mac Cmd+Shift+V doesn’t remove the linebreaks.

#6

I don’t know Macs, but Googling it I get:
OS X allows you to paste text without its original formatting . Instead of using Command+V , you can press Option+Shift+Command+V to paste text without any formatting .

#7

You are right that option+shift+cmd+V is different, but it actually creates a new block on each linebreak - so a paragraph of text is split over ten different blocks. The Smart Blocks solution I linked above is a good solution - I just type “jj enter” and then cmd-V as normal.