Re: Apple hiring $MS programmers?

In article
<mlsiemon-21438D.01132801032008@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Michael Siemon <mlsiemon@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article
<jollyroger-0291CB.01390501032008@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Jolly Roger <jollyroger@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <michelle-C9145E.22205429022008@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Michelle Steiner <michelle@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <fqamf0$ned$3@xxxxxxxx>, nospamatall <nospamatall@xxxxxx>
wrote:

How many times do I have to say it? I'm not suggesting rtf etc should
not be present, only complaining that plain txt is not default and
not even in the list unless you configure the thing deliberately in
the first place.

I think that you are making a mountain out of a molehill. The
deliberate configuration is a trivial matter.

I disagree. It's the small things that make Mac OS better than
alternatives. This is one obvious area where a Mac application is not
behaving the way a Mac application should.

You may have done so already, but could you specify just what _you_
mean by "the way a Mac application should" behave" in this context?
I use TextEdit a lot. And I often deal with conversions to and from
Plain Text to RTF.

I would (sort of) agree that TextEdit doesn't _quite_ seem to be
"Mac like" -- but I'm really very unsure what it "should" do that
is different from what it does. There is a seriously non-Mac kind
of thing going on when you convert from plaint text to RTF (or the
other way). I not infrequently scarf up text from a web site and
want to treat it like text (as opposed, for example, to "printing"
to a PDF); in some contexts that I currently deal with, there is a
lot of "garbage" in the RTF format (e.g., background colors). I find
myself frequently tossing away the formatting by down-converting to
plain text, and then immediately reconverting to RTF, only to have
to impose my own preferred formatting. Given that, I'd _like_ to be
able to work within RTF format and discard the crap that web-sites
insist on shoving at us. So I could see a "super" TextEdit that I
could use to just toss out the crap and keep what I like about the
stuff I copy. But as it happens, I _can_ do whatever I like with the
current functionality, and it is not _Apple's_ fault that folks make
stupidly over-specified web pages!

In most cases, I will be imposing my own style (fonts/sizes/etc.) on
the stuff I import into TextEdit, whatever it may import as; I'd like
not to struggle doing this -- but it does not seem to me to be non-Mac
in character to discard garbage formatting from an input and impose a
Mac-like style (or something else if you prefer!) on the filtered
input.

What am I missing in all of this, that TextEdit is "not [really] a
Mac application"? Just how _should_ it behave? And do you honestly
think that _I_ want it to behave exactly the way _you_ do?

You're overcomplicating the matter. All that is needed is for Apple to
add "Plain text" to the list of formats in the Save dialog, and, when
that is chosen, strip all formatting from the document on-the-fly during
save.

--
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JR
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Apple hiring $MS programmers?
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