Adding a link url via copy/paste doesn't work on previously formatted text

[bph]

Description

For some of my content I add a link to text and then bold it. Sometimes, I bold it first and then add the link.
For a while now I noticed that copy/page over a highlight text didn't always work, and I finally chased down the source of this "misbehavior"

If the text is formatted in bold, highlighting and adding the link via copy/paste doesn't work anymore. It does\work when using the link button, but that makes the process two clicks longer.

See below video for illustration.

Step-by-step reproduction instructions

• Add a paragraph block with text.
• Highlight a portion of the text
• Format it in bold
• Highlight the text again
• copy/paste a URL. (use https://google.com or any other url)

Screenshots, screen recording, code snippet

Screen.Recording.2024-07-11.at.15.22.38.mov

Environment info

• WordPress 6.6 RC3 (but it has been there for a while so it's not a WordPress 6.6 issue)
• Gutenberg 18.7.1
• Google Chrome Version 126.0.6478.127

Please confirm that you have searched existing issues in the repo.

Yes

Please confirm that you have tested with all plugins deactivated except Gutenberg.

Yes

[ndiego]

Yes, I can confirm. This issue also happens on any previously formatted text. For example, the same thing happens when text is italicized or set to inline code.

[t-hamano]

I was able to reproduce this issue, and it seems to occur when copying and pasting text with some inline formatting.

fa222cded81ed1264aa1494a9de94310.mp4

[t-hamano]

I discovered that this problem was caused by the following PR:

• Writing Flow/Rich Text: unify split logic #54543

Commenting out this conditional statement seems to fix the problem, but it might have some side effects.

Maybe @ellatrix knows something.

[ellatrix]

@t-hamano do you want to try a PR and see what tests fail?

[rfischmann]

We have a reusable block in our site that adds a <span> with a specific class and some text inside of it. I also can't select the text and paste a link anymore on WordPress 6.6.

[t-hamano]

I think this issue was resolved as a result of #63671 and is not reproducible in the latest Gutenberg, so I would like to close it.

I think it will be important to see if we backport the fix for this issue to a WP6.6 minor release. See this comment.