Problem description: 

Test Environment:
Debian Wheezy 7.4,
MS Windows XP

Tested versions:
4.2.1.1 (bad)
4.2.0.2 (bad)
4.0.6 (bad)
3.5.4.2 (better but still with some inappropriateness)

In my tests, most functions of Format Paintbrush in Writer 4.0.6 and above do not work.

While it is better in 3.5.4.2, it also gave me many surprises, compared to MS Word 2003, especially when copying character attributes such as Italic or underline to default format text back and forth.

The behaviors of Format Paintbrush is defined completely in the following document, isn't it?
Page 180 to 183 of https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/images/a/ac/IG40-ImpressGuideLO.pdf

Steps to reproduce:
1. Do some tests according to Table 6 and Table 7 in page 180 of the document mentioned above.

Current behavior:
Chaos!
1. Paragraph formats cannot be applied.
2. Only some character formats can be applied correctly, but not all are correct, for example, in some cases character format with small font size cannot be copied to the text with larger font size.

Expected behavior:
Paragraph formats and character formats can be copied correctly.

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NOTES
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What are the standard behaviors?
Is there any document that defines the behaviors of Format Paintbrush in more detail?

I am still not very clear about it.  For example, should underline and Italic attributes be copied or not; what if we want to copy a normal character format without underline to text with underline?  For this, Writer will give us a big surprise although we cannot say it is totally wrong! In MS Word, the related functions are more intuitive and clean.

Should the behaviors in MS Word be the standard?  I think MS Word does much better than LO now in this function.

Detail standard can help us set up complete test cases.  Once the standard is very clear, I think the programming logic should not be that hard and chaotic.
Operating System: All
Version: 4.2.1.1 release