Re: Formating TextEdit documents
Re: Formating TextEdit documents
- Subject: Re: Formating TextEdit documents
- From: Bill Briggs <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 3 May 2009 00:53:13 -0300
Title: Re: Formating TextEdit
documents
At 9:57 PM -0600 4/30/09, Sutapalli Satyanarayana wrote:
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I worte a
apple script that will open Dictionary and using "keystroke"
I will enter some text and copy the text to clipboard.
Then I will
create a new document in TextEdit and using "keystroke"
(v & command down), I will paste the clipboard contents to
textedit document and save it on desktop as "meaning.rtf".
The whole porcess is working fine.
Now, I want to
format the document like
1. Set
the "Normal" paragraph style to Left aligned + Euclid 12 point
bold + keep lines together.
2. For
each line that begins with the string "ORIGIN", set the paragraph
style to "Origin". This paragraph style should be Normal +
12-point line spacing above + keep lines together.
3.
Eliminate all lines beginning with the string "
[1913". (some definitions have this)
and many more
like these.
One way is
before pasting the clipboard, format the text and then paste it to
textedit document.
Other way is
after saving the document, re-open it and format.
Which way I
can achieve this task. What commands in Apple script I have to use for
formating text.
I googled a
lot and couldn't find something relevant for my
task.
I'm not surprised.
First, TextEdit doesn't support a style catalogue, so
having a "normal" paragraph style that you could apply, as
you might see in Word, is not something you get in TextEdit. It has
basic, menu-selected formatting, so it's all manual. (Yes, you can
script it, but it's not like you might want it to be.) If you want to
apply preset styles, you're not using the right tool. There is a long
discussion around what tool might be useful for you (and not knowing
your situation, it's difficult to speculate), but TextEdit is not
likely the thing you need. Nor is Word. The sad fact is, your options
are limited unless you are prepared to spend significant
dollars.
If you are going to script styled text on the cheap, you
will be happier using Tex-Edit plus. Scripting in this application is
a pleasant experience. Scripting in TextEdit, by comparison, is
not.
If you want an application that has pre-defined paragraph
styles that you can apply via scripting, then there are no clear
winners. It's an unhappy lot you have to choose from, either because
of expense, bugs, or lack of good scripting support.
If I were doing the task you describe, I'd use FrameMaker.
But the demise of the Mac version of FrameMaker is yet another sad
tale. We have 35,000 iPhone applications, but lost the preeminent tech
writing tool on the Mac platform. So much for my loathing of
Adobe.
- web
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