Is there a way to have it preserve the original ore patch shape instead of pasting it as a square?

It might be an option, but would open up a massive amount of complexity as I'd have to store each specific cell and value.

This is not something I'd be likely to implement

This is the only thing I ever wanted from the mod, I just wanted to move it over slightly, reshaping them feels cheaty in my opinion. Maintaining the shape makes it natural, requires me to do the same balancing & number of miners.

Came here looking for the same thing... there was another mod that did exactly this: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/ore-manager-fixed but it is still on v1.1 as of 11/23/2024

I'd also be interested in maintaining shape - or if not shape, at least generating an approximate shape similar to a normal patch.

Yeah, maintaining the exact shape would be an awful lot of data but it would be nice if it laid it out in a fashion similar to what the game does. Note squares and total ore, when pasting if you specify a very small region it pastes a typical distribution over as many squares as it picked up. The rectangles are good for oil but ugly for anything else.