• Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    18
    ·
    8 days ago

    Does this work with any text on page (vs just inputs)?

    Currently dealing with several digital textbooks - that I fucking purchased - from Elsevier that disable copy functions, which makes pulling chunks of text from a page to take notes a pain in the ass. I’ve resorted to just using the snipit tool to capture tiny screenshots of the text I want, but that’s ofc significantly less ideal than just highlighting text and hitting Ctrl+C.

    • hactar42@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      21
      ·
      8 days ago

      There is a Firefox extension called Absolute Enable Right Click & Copy that works great for a lot sites that block you from being able to copy.

      • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        8 days ago

        Okay that actually sounds pretty amazing… but I can’t get it to work. Win+shift+T seems to just cycle through the icons pinned in my taskbar. I’ll do some googling to see if I can figure out why that is, but if you know a quick fix, then yes please!!

    • stom@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      8 days ago

      ShareX has an OCR feature. It’s a tool for taking screenshots and recordings, with support for configurable workflows which can do all sorts, including extract text from the snipped area and copy it to the clipboard.

    • Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      8 days ago

      I just thought of a possible bypass. Maybe a phone’s “scan document” function can help with that? Provided that the text is clear, you may be able to scan a webpage and save it as a scanned document. Then open the doc on your phone (or other device), and you should be able to highlight and copy the scanned text.

      Okay, maybe not. I tested it with this very page and although the copied text got the gist, I still would’ve had to go back and edit things. But eh, YMMV. It could be a valid work-around for somebody, just with different text or using a different device.

      • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        8 days ago

        Usually I just leave them as little image blocks of text cuz ain’t nobody got time for dat. When I actually do want to fully convert it (usually only bother if I’m sending something out to the class), then I’ll save the whole doc as a PDF and then run it through an optical character recognition service like this one. There are ways, they just suck when a feature like copy exists.