Hide Formatting?

[Robert A. Ober]

Hey Folks,

I searched and surprisingly did not find the answer.  I have an rtf document that I have open in BBEdit 11.1.4 .  I want to see the document like I do in TextEdit as a properly formatted document without the formatting visible.  Preview does not do it correctly.  In preview I still get the formatting code.

So clue in a noob please.

Thanks,
Robert A. Ober

[Bruce Van Allen]

On 1/12/16 at 10:48 AM, info...@gmail.com (Robert A. Ober) wrote:
>I searched and surprisingly did not find the answer. I have an
>rtf document that I have open in BBEdit 11.1.4 . I want to see
>the document like I do in TextEdit as a properly formatted
>document without the formatting visible. Preview does not do
>it correctly. In preview I still get the formatting code.

I work with .rtf for some custom outputs from my software. But
to see it rendered, I open the file in TextEdit, Nisus Writer
Pro, or MS Word.

The thing is, BBEdit is a text editor, not a formatting word
processor. So there's no way for it to render RTF.

BBEdit does have built-in HTML rendering for its Preview
command. I suppose you could submit a feature request for
similar RTF rendering. Probably wouldn't get very high on the
devs' list, though ...

Some of the scripting adepts on this list could probably bang
out a way to open your .rtf file in a word processor - lookin'
at you, Christopher :). The script could be assigned a keyboard
combo; could even include a "Save" command for the .rtf file
just before opening it for preview in the word processor. That
way your keyboard combo would let you both save and preview in
one action.

HTH
--

- Bruce

_bruce__van_allen__santa_cruz__ca_

[Jeffrey Jones]

On Jan 12, 2016, at 1:48 PM, Robert A. Ober <info...@gmail.com> wrote:

I searched and surprisingly did not find the answer.  I have an rtf document that I have open in BBEdit 11.1.4 .  I want to see the document like I do in TextEdit as a properly formatted document without the formatting visible.  Preview does not do it correctly.

I've never had any reason to do this, but I just did an experiment: open the document in TextEdit along side the BBEdit window. The TextEdit window updates as soon as BBEdit saves. You do have to save, but TextEdit reflects the change almost immediately.

(OS X 10.11.2)

[Robert A. Ober]

On Tuesday, January 12, 2016 at 1:58:39 PM UTC-6, Bruce Van Allen wrote:

I work with .rtf for some custom outputs from my software. But
to see it rendered, I open the file in TextEdit, Nisus Writer
Pro, or MS Word.

The thing is, BBEdit is a text editor, not a formatting word
processor. So there's no way for it to render RTF.

BBEdit does have built-in HTML rendering for its Preview
command. I suppose you could submit a feature request for
similar RTF rendering. Probably wouldn't get very high on the
devs' list, though ...

___________________________

Interesting, surprising, and dissapointing.  If they can read the formatting it would seem that a preview would be fairly easy.  Opensource code probably somewhere. 

Guess I will have to continue to use TextEdit for some things.

Thanks for your reply,
Robert

[Robert A. Ober]

On Tuesday, January 12, 2016 at 2:15:02 PM UTC-6, jajls wrote:

I've never had any reason to do this, but I just did an experiment: open the document in TextEdit along side the BBEdit window. The TextEdit window updates as soon as BBEdit saves. You do have to save, but TextEdit reflects the change almost immediately.

_________________________________

Thanks for that but I want to use BBEdit instead of TextEdit but for now that is not possible.

Take it EZ,
Robert

[Jeffrey Jones]

On Jan 12, 2016, at 6:47 PM, Robert A. Ober <info...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks for that but I want to use BBEdit instead of TextEdit but for now that is not possible.

My suggestion was that you do use BBEdit. Open a TextEdit window to the side to act as a preview. Do your editing in BBEdit. As soon as you save, the TextEdit window updates. The need to save to see updates is the only significant difference from having a live preview.

[Rich Siegel]

On Tuesday, January 12, 2016, Robert A. Ober <info...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>I want to see the document like I do in TextEdit as a properly
>formatted document without the formatting visible.

WAYRTTD? As you describe it, the problem is insoluble -- styled
text documents are stored as RTF ("rich text format"), and you
can't just 'hide the formatting', because it's intrinsic to the
document data.

But it's also not clear to me what you mean by "properly
formatted document without the formatting visible", since that
statement seems logically inconsistent. :-)

If you could hypothetically edit an RTF document without styles,
the tool doing the editing would have to still have to preserve
the formatting information that is intrinsic to RTF, and that
simply doesn't map into a plain-text tool like BBEdit.

Put another way, RTF contains formatting information that is
inseparable in both syntax and semantics from the text that it
describes, so you can have formatted text and a fully formed RTF
file, or you can extract the plain text and lose all of the
formatting information in a plain-text tool, but not both
simultaneously. :-)

R.
--
Rich Siegel Bare Bones Software, Inc.
<sie...@barebones.com> <http://www.barebones.com/>

Someday I'll look back on all this and laugh... until they
sedate me.

[Christopher Stone]

On Jan 12, 2016, at 14:10, Robert A. Ober <info...@gmail.com> wrote:

Interesting, surprising, and dissapointing.  If they can read the formatting it would seem that a preview would be fairly easy.

______________________________________________________________________

Hello Robert,

BBEdit is simply not designed to render RTF in its Preview window or otherwise.

I'm not aware of any plain-text editor on the Mac or Windows that does this, but if you know of one I'd be happy to have that information.

Guess I will have to continue to use TextEdit for some things.

TextEdit is an awkward little editor, but it's small and fast and has its uses.

It appears TextEdit will auto-update an open document when you make changes to the raw RTF of the same document with BBEdit – so it can be used as a preview mechanism.

To facilitate that a little bit you can use some AppleScript:

------------------------------------------------------------

tell application "BBEdit"

  tell front text document

    if its on disk = true then

      set bbeditDocFile to its file as alias

      set keepGoing to true

    else

      beep

      set keepGoing to false

    end if

  end tell

end tell

if keepGoing then

  tell application "TextEdit"

    activate

    open bbeditDocFile

    if bounds of front window ≠ {1015, 23, 1920, 1196} then

      set bounds of front window to {1015, 23, 1920, 1196}

    end if

  end tell

end if

------------------------------------------------------------

This will open the front BBEdit document in TextEdit, activate the app, and set the size & position (bounds) of the front window in TextEdit.

TextEdit has the unfortunate habit of resizing documents when it updates them.

So.  The functionality you desire is available if not as convenient as you wanted it to be.

If you want a more full-featured RTF editor and are willing to spend money then take a look at Jedit X.

http://www.artman21.com/en/jedit_x/

--

Best Regards,

Chris

[Patrick Woolsey]

On 1/14/16 at 12:28 PM, listm...@suddenlink.net (Christopher Stone) wrote:

[...]

> If you want a more full-featured RTF editor and are willing to spend
> money then take a look at Jedit X.

Or you can just use Pages. :-)


Regards,

Patrick Woolsey
==
Bare Bones Software, Inc. <http://www.barebones.com/>

[Christopher Stone]

On Jan 14, 2016, at 13:41, Patrick Woolsey <pwoo...@barebones.com> wrote:

If you want a more full-featured RTF editor and are willing to spend money then take a look at Jedit X.

Or you can just use Pages. :-)

______________________________________________________________________

Hey Patrick,

Which one?  Pages 5.6.1 gives me this:

--
Take Care,
Chris

[François Schiettecatte]

You can export your file in Word format and then import that in Pages 5.6.1.

Or you could get MS Word.

And I think we have left the map in terms of BBEdit support :)

François

> <Screen Shot 2016-01-14 at 16.26.06.jpg>
>
> --
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> Chris
>
>
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[Patrick Woolsey]

On 1/14/16 at 5:32 PM, listm...@suddenlink.net (Christopher

Stone) wrote:

>>Or you can just use Pages. :-)
>______________________________________________________________________
>
>Hey Patrick,
>

>Which one? Pages 5.6.1 gives me this: [[doesn't recognize an RTF file]]


Mea culpa; I didn't realize the 'new' Pages does not support RTF
(really, Apple?) so my apologies for the incorrect info.

As for other options, there's always Microsoft Word, plus Nisus
Writer Express or Pro, Scrivener, etc.


[ PS: And yes, this discussion has indeed veered quite far
off-track so I'd appreciate if we can snip the thread here. :-) ]