Pasting modifies/removes spacing

[peterwilsoncc]

Describe the bug
Copying a paragraph from HTML can drop spaces around strong and em tags and covert spaces to non-breaking spaces.

-<p>Signs of economic trouble <strong>could get voters thinking more about such progressive platforms.</strong> Though, if the primary election of 1992 (remember, the one that brought us "It's the economy, stupid"?) is any indication, <a href="https://theweek.com/articles/858824/how-trump-recession-could-cement-bidens-2020-victory" target="_self" title="">voters might choose a safe, familiar path</a> — a centrist candidate like Joe Biden.</p>
+<p>Signs of economic trouble&nbsp;<strong>could get voters thinking more about such progressive platforms.</strong>Though, if the primary election of 1992 (remember, the one that brought us "It's the economy, stupid"?) is any indication,&nbsp;<a href="https://theweek.com/articles/858824/how-trump-recession-could-cement-bidens-2020-victory">voters might choose a safe, familiar path</a>&nbsp;— a centrist candidate like Joe Biden.</p>

-- online source https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-16/trump-could-lose-2020-election-if-the-economy-tanks/11420022

Note:

• missing space in sentence beginning "Though"
• multiple spaces converted to non-breaking spaces

To reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Go to this article on ABC News, Australia
2. Select the paragraph beginning "Signs of economic trouble" and ending with "Joe Biden"
3. Copy the paragraph
4. Paste the text in to the visual editor view of a paragraph block
5. Observe the missing spaces in the visual editor
6. Switch to the HTML editor view and observe the non-breaking spaces

Expected behavior
Copy and paste should not affect markup

Desktop (please complete the following information):

• OS: macOS 10.13.6
• Browser: Chrome 76.0

Additional context

• Able to reproduce locally in Gutenberg versions 6.3.0 and 6.4.0-rc1, additionally reproducable on the playground at https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/

[desaiuditd]

I spent some time to debug on this. This looks like more of an OS level issue. Please see below the console logs of the paste handler.

Received HTML:

 <meta charset='utf-8'><span style="color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(249, 249, 249); text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">Signs of economic trouble<span> </span></span><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(249, 249, 249); text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">could get voters thinking more about such progressive platforms.</strong><span style="color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(249, 249, 249); text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">Though, if th</span>

Notice in the above log 👆that there's no space between the point where <strong> tag is ended and the text Though, if th is starting.

Received plain text:

 Signs of economic trouble could get voters thinking more about such progressive platforms. Though, if th

Processed inline HTML:

 Signs of economic trouble&nbsp;<strong>could get voters thinking more about such progressive platforms.</strong>Though, if th

I went ahead and checked this in Classic Editor. If I paste the same content into TinyMCE, the spaces are removed there as well.

Not sure if we can do anything about this. 🤷‍♂

[aprea]

I was also able to reproduce this in the block editor. I performed some additional testing in a standalone HTML page with a contenteditable div but was not able reproduce the issue.

See this codepen for the content I was testing with - https://codepen.io/aprea/pen/LYPOavx

HTML content

When pasted into a contenteditable div on a standalone HTML page

When pasted into a paragraph block in the block editor

[aprea]

I'm unable to reproduce this on 6.5.0, seems like it may have been fixed elsewhere.

[ellatrix]

@peterwilsoncc Are you still experiencing this issue with Gutenberg 7.0?

[peterwilsoncc]

@ellatrix Sorry it's take a few days. No, I can't reproduce this anymore so will close the issue off.