Hi Coda,
I have a public doc here that lists requirements for law school applications. Anyone on my team and anyone with a link can comment. I just realized, though, that nobody can copy text from the document, which would be really useful.
I think that if users have permission to view or comment on a doc, they should also be able to copy it.
You’re right, this doesn’t make for the easiest of interactions. I’ll pass this along as a usability note in our tracker.
I do believe you’re actually able to copy info out of that doc though, it’s just not readily apparent. The detail view you’re using is a view of a table, which means each bit of text is actually in the cell of a table. When you are in “View Only” mode, you’d be clicking into the cell to edit in order to highlight the text, so this part of the process is where we limit things to keep people from editing.
You can actually click on any of those text areas (cells), and then use Command + c or Control + c to copy. There isn’t any visual indicator though that this is possible.