"Create New text-only clipping" option

[chrisweuve]

Okay, I figure there’s a 50/50 chance that this feature is already implemented but, if so, I haven’t been able to find it.

Sometimes when clipping from a website, something funny things happen. (This is especially true if the website features, say, light text on a dark background.) It would be useful if there was a “clip text only” feature that stripped the formatting and just left the text.

chrisw

PS: As always, great app!

[AmberV]

Try 85% You can’t do it using the clipping service, but straight old copy and paste with a slight twist:

From the FAQ:

@FAQ

:arrow: [size=100][1] I would like to be able to strip all existing formatting when I paste.[/size]
Like many other Cocoa applications, such as TextEdit, Scrivener supports the ability to paste the contents of your clipboard without any of its existing fonts and styles. The menu command for this is Edit/Paste and Match Style, or you can use the shortcut, Cmd-Opt-Shift-V.

Additionally, the way Annotations and Footnotes are handled in Scrivener is much like a regular style, like bold or italics. Thus, when you copy and paste normally, the text’s status as either form of meta-data will be carried along with it. Using Cmd-Opt-Shift-V will allow you to paste text that was in an annotation, as ordinary text.

If you don’t want to bother with where the text is going yet, I suggest using the Scratchpad feature (Cmd-/), which can sit ghosted in the corner of your screen until you need it. Just paste without formatting into this, and later when you want to move the text to where it should go, you’ll find some handy options for doing this using the drop-down menu in the Scratchpad window.

If you absolutely must have that 25%, then you still don’t have much to worry about. Use the clipping service as you have been, and when you are ready to use the text in Scrivener, just select all of the clips in the Binder, and in the Documents menu, under Convert, select “Formatting to Default Text Style” and they will all be set to your preferred font and ruler settings at once.

[chrisweuve]

@AmberV

Try 85% You can’t do it using the clipping service, but straight old copy and paste with a slight twist:

Okay, great, that works!

Additionally, the way Annotations and Footnotes are handled in Scrivener is much like a regular style, like bold or italics. Thus, when you copy and paste normally, the text’s status as either form of meta-data will be carried along with it. Using Cmd-Opt-Shift-V will allow you to paste text that was in an annotation, as ordinary text.

Okay, great, that works!

If you don’t want to bother with where the text is going yet, I suggest using the Scratchpad feature (Cmd-/), which can sit ghosted in the corner of your screen until you need it. Just paste without formatting into this, and later when you want to move the text to where it should go, you’ll find some handy options for doing this using the drop-down menu in the Scratchpad window.

Okay, great, a new feature! (Or at least one I had totally forgotten about.)

If you absolutely must have that 25%, then you still don’t have much to worry about. Use the clipping service as you have been, and when you are ready to use the text in Scrivener, just select all of the clips in the Binder, and in the Documents menu, under Convert, select “Formatting to Default Text Style” and they will all be set to your preferred font and ruler settings at once.

Ah, but that does NOT work. It changes the font and font size, but does NOT make the background color go away or the text color change.

So, it’s back to about 75%, but that’s good enough.

Thanks!

chrisw

[xiamenese]

@chrisweuve

@AmberV

If you absolutely must have that 25%, then you still don’t have much to worry about. Use the clipping service as you have been, and when you are ready to use the text in Scrivener, just select all of the clips in the Binder, and in the Documents menu, under Convert, select “Formatting to Default Text Style” and they will all be set to your preferred font and ruler settings at once.

Ah, but that does NOT work. It changes the font and font size, but does NOT make the background color go away or the text color change.

So, it’s back to about 75%, but that’s good enough.

Thanks!

chrisw

That’s odd … worked perfectly for me when I downloaded a book Keith mentioned in another thread. On the web it was white type on a black background.

In fact, I dragged the downloaded files into the research folder, copied the text and then pasted it into a new-file in the drafts folder … background gone. That gave me white text on a white background, so select all change text colour, click “Convert formatting to Default Text Style” and there I had it … the text in my standard Scriv formatting. About 10 minutes to do a whole 14 chapter book with front and end materials.

Keith, can we have way to set text colour as part of the Default Text Style, please? I’ll put it in the “Wishlist” thread.

Mark

[KB]

Keith, can we have way to set text colour as part of the Default Text Style, please? I’ll put it in the “Wishlist” thread.

You can already do this. In the Text Editing Preferences panel, just click in the text view and then hit shift-cmd-C to bring up the colour panel. You can use that to set the default text colour.

Best,
Keith

[xiamenese]

@KB

Keith, can we have way to set text colour as part of the Default Text Style, please? I’ll put it in the “Wishlist” thread.

You can already do this. In the Text Editing Preferences panel, just click in the text view and then hit shift-cmd-C to bring up the colour panel. You can use that to set the default text colour.

Best,
Keith

My apologies, Keith. I had been looking for a “colour” button of some kind and never thought of clicking in the text view area when I just checked. Also, it’s so long since I have looked at the preferences there, I failed to notice the “apply” button. Such apps as I have been setting up more recently haven’t had an “apply” button in their preferences … just close the window.

Anyway thanks … it’s something that has niggled me off and on for quite a while.

Mark

[AmberV]

Math and I were always fuzzy as a blanket!

[chrisweuve]

…but for kentaurus.com, the Convert +> Formatting to Default Text Style changes the text, but not the background nor the text color.

[xiamenese]

@chrisweuve

…but for kentaurus.com, the Convert +> Formatting to Default Text Style changes the text, but not the background nor the text color.

Interesting … when I download your page (using OmniWeb) it doesn’t bring the background colour … presumably that is specified in a .css and once the page is downloaded it can’t open the relevant file.

For the text, no it doesn’t lose the blue (in my case) and the underlines as those are still links, which point to other .html files in the local folder – which of course are not there in the Download folder – or to other pages on the web – but the link is also broken there, even in Safari. To get rid of the blue one would presumably have to remove their setting as links, which I guess essentially means cleaning out hidden html code.

Mark

Seeing your post again, I presume you get the background colour because it does reference the copy of the .css file which is on your machine.

[chrisweuve]

@xiamenese

Seeing your post again, I presume you get the background colour because it does reference the copy of the .css file which is on your machine.

I hadn’t thought of that – could be. I have seen other pages, though, where for whatever reason there was something funky about the text, that funkiness remained. (I just tested a page where most of the page ended up as a column, one letter wide.)

It would be nice if there was a “Create New text-only clipping” option that got around all of this. In that case, I would view any images, etc., going away as a feature and not a bug. Sometimes you just want the text.

Thanks!

[chrisweuve]

FWIW, I discovered at some point that any selection from the Style menu on the ruler will override the background color.

[KB]

Hi, yes, that’s because the background (highlight) colour is part of the font information, so the style will indeed alter it.
All the best,
Keith