Extended RTF Editing Features... a workaround

[wordmuse]

Hi -

I thought I'd throw my two cents (well 10 cents) in too.

First of all, like hoisting, I think, Kinook, you may not realize just how intensely lots of your users would find this beneficial.

Like hoisting, this would improve UR and URP a bajillion percent. Really. And just as I did with my short list of what I wanted with hoisting, here's my short list for *internal* rtf capability in UR and URP.

1 - named Styles with a drop down similar to the one you have for fonts. I want to be able to call a style something like boldredyellow, which when applied, gives me bold red text on a yellow background. If I have another style called, perhaps, ocean, then it might have blue italic text on a cyan background. rocky ocean might have bullets, too. I want to name the styles myself in addition to any that UR has natively.

2 - tables - ideally the ability to have nested tables would be good, but I'll settle for flat tables. I want to be able to change the widths of the cells, apply formatting (and styles) inside the tables, set the indents within the cells, and most of the easy stuff I could do with Word 98, never mind Word 2003 and Word 2007.

3 - paragraph level indents - I want to be able to visually offset my text as needed.

4 - numbered bullets

5 - format painter - a godsend master tool

That's my short list. There's a whole lot more I could - and will - ask for as UR continues to evolve. (example: outlining) But I personally would be thrilled as each of these items became implemented in UR.

Jumping out to Word isn't a huge problem for me, though it would be if I were using UR in a production environment, where knocking out content lickity-split was required. It takes about 10 seconds for Word to load and then load my item when I ctrl+j it. And the return trip takes about the same amount of time. Multiply that by the number of times I need to do this (for some, I could imagine it being a very regular task), and this gets old and could potentially impact productivity.

I know that you can't expect every program to meet every need you might have. And I fully accpet that this request might negatively trade off with some other wonderful feature that UR currently supports. For example, I would not give up hoisting just to have a better internal RTF editor. But assuming that I don't have to give up something like that in order to get a better internal RTF editor, I think that Kinook should truly understand the passion of this request by its userbase.

Again - I believe that implementing this would be welcomed with the same enthusiasm that you had when hoisting was implemented. Really.

Regards,
Bal

[quant]

Originally posted by wordmuse
It takes about 10 seconds for Word to load and then load my item when I ctrl+j it. And the return trip takes about the same amount of time. Multiply that by the number of times I need to do this (for some, I could imagine it being a very regular task), and this gets old and could potentially impact productivity.

who told you to use the slowest editor, ie. Word?

I personally dont care about rft editor capabilities in UR, choosing font and bold/underline/highlight is all I need (I concentrate more on the context rather than on the form, instead of bullets, hyphen is enough ). In fact, I'd be much happier if html was the base document rather than rft, and as you say you can always use external editor if you really need "advanced" features. I thinks there are other places in UR that need improvement, say calendar features, but that's just me. But it's always nice to know that kinook listens to their users ...

[janrif]

Originally posted by wordmuse
[snip]4 - numbered bullets [/snip]

A "Numbering" feature like in Word to compliment the Bullet Point feature.

This is available from the keyboard via Ctrl+Shift+L (toggles between bulleting and several numbering styles).

[wordmuse]

thanks about the bullets - ctrl+shift+l cycles through bullets and numbers - sweet.

OK - I guess there are lots of different classes of users out here. Which is why it's so difficult to figure out what to do next if you're the developer.

For me, it's a mix: I find organization incredibly important but that very ordering is influenced by the writing itself. Ideas as I write trigger ideas about structure which trigger new ideas to write about...

So having both - a powerful editor (whether dreamweaver style - which would be - for me - a superior alternative to RTF) or RTF and powerful organizational capability is ideal. If I have to make a choice, I go with organizational. I'd prefer plain text with hoisting that feature rich text without hoisting.

And as for the world's slowest word processor... ahh well ... I can't say I make the best choices in everything. They're just choices..

Regards,
Bal

[cnewtonne]

Kinook,
My whole purpose of starting this thread was to come up with a practical solution and some kind of delivery to resolve this issue. In one of my posts and has asked for a commitment from you to look into this issue. To re-iterate, I will kindly remind you of my original request ...

....
Kinook,
As a deliverable out of this discussion, can we proceed with these steps ...

- Can we first of all agree on this list of editing features.
- If we can, can we get a commitment from you to escalate this issue on top of your feature list for next maintenance release.


....

Would it be possible to hear from you and see what we can do to move towards a resolution.

[kinook]

Originally posted by cnewtonne
Default shorcuts
-------------------------------------------------------
I was kind of surprised to know that this control supported a default set of shortcuts. I tested most of them and they work just fine in Wordpad. For example, 'cntrl+1|2' in Wordpad will change line spacing. Also, 'cntrl+=' will apply superscript format. The least you can do is to allow users to use them in UR. Why override them and delete an entire functionality out of UR. If the control supports 'cntrl+1|2' for line spacing, why are you asking users to copy/paste their content to an external app to do it.

You can enable Ctrl+1, Ctrl+2, and Ctrl+5 to change line spacing in the UR rich text editor by unbinding those shortcuts from their default commands (go to Tools | Customize | Keyboard, select View | Data Explorer, select Ctrl+1 key assignment, and click Remove; repeat for View | Item Details and View | Other Windows | Item Notes).

As a deliverable out of this discussion, can we proceed with these steps ...

- Can we first of all agree on this list of editing features.
- If we can, can we get a commitment from you to escalate this issue on top of your feature list for next maintenance release.

There is not total agreement on which RTF features are the most important (or whether RTF enhancements should even be at the top of the list). RTF editing enhancements are on our list, along with many other feature requests, and we'll prioritize as best we can.

[intermagic]

Hi cnewtonne,

can you please provide us with some more information about how you use Perfect Keyboard to insert formatted text into UR? I checked the Perfect Keyboard Website and tried the software - it seems to be a very powerful tool. But I don't know how to get my formatted text for example from MS Word to a macro for permanently usage. I found only the possibility to read from and write to clipboard, but the clipoboard content changes very often and I want to paste my formatted text(s) only...

By the way, I found a tool called "Perfect Menu" on the Pitrinec Website. With this tool are you able to use your macros within a (new or extended) right click menu within specific applications - for example within UR. This could be very useful for inserting formatted texts (styles) without the need to define (and to remember ;-) keyboard shortcuts...

Thanks and bye

Ralf

[intermagic]

Hi,

I found the info to store formatted text - it's possible via the Clipboard Macro function in Perfect Keyboard. Together with Perfect Menu it works great (by right click) and enhances the usage of UR enormous!

Please see the attached Screenshot.

Bye

Ralf

[zargron]

Only one version of Perfect Menu available.

However, which version of Perfect Keyboard did you go with?
--- LITE
--- PRO
--- Advanced Scripting

[wordmuse]

Cool solution - I used MacroToolworks, another product by pitrinec.com to do this and it works great.

Thanks for the tip.

Regards,
Bal

[janrif]

Originally posted by wordmuse
Cool solution - I used MacroToolworks, another product by pitrinec.com to do this and it works great.[snip]

Could you plse explain how formatting is accomplished? What kind of extended RTF functions are you talking about besides tables. Thanks.

[wordmuse]

Sure -

The "fix" isn't ideal. What would be ideal is to have native styles within URP3.

Now - mind you, I haven't done a lot with this method yet because I've got other priorities on my plate. But I did create a couple of what I'm going to call "style-inserts."

First, in Word, I created a style called boldredyellow, which you can infer is a bold red font on a yellow background. I then spelled out "bry" and set it's style to boldredyellow.

Then I copied the text to the Windows clipboard.

Switching to MacroToolworks, I created a clipboard macro called (you guessed it) boldredyellow, which took the current clipboard contents as its value.

I haven't gone so far as to create menus for this yet (again - priorities), but I created a hot key (Ctrl+B,Y) and now when I press this key combination, the boldredyellow "bry" is inserted.

I then have to select the bry text and can start typing with the new style.

It's an irritating kluge - far from ideal. But it's faster than jumping out to Word, writing my text, stylizing some of it boldredyellow and then coming back into the URP3 environment. But what the heck - I work with the world I live in.

URP3 is a superior product. Nothing does everything. I'm not going to complain - too much about something like this.

I got hoisting. I'm a very happy camper.

Regards,
Bal

[janrif]

Originally posted by wordmuse
Sure -

The "fix" isn't ideal. What would be ideal is to have native styles within URP3.

Now - mind you, I haven't done a lot with this method yet because I've got other priorities on my plate. But I did create a couple of what I'm going to call "style-inserts."[snip]

Thanks Bal. That sounds like a lot of kludge. I think I've got other priorities too. But I appreciate your taking the time to explain it to me.

[dasymington]

I've downloaded Jarte and changed the properties for rtf files so that Jarte opens them by default. When I click on Open Document in UR the info item opens in Jarte and I can use it's formatting and editing features and then save it and resume internal editing in UR.

Perhaps not quite what you were looking for but it does allow you to use the advanced formatting that's not readily available in UR.

[zargron]

Thanks for the heads up on Jarte dasymington. It looks really good and I was seriously considering giving it a go. However, I was disappointed to find Jarte doesn't directly support tables.

Woopsie! I was about to leave the Jarte web site and I decided to take a glance at the new features in version 3.0. And - they've added a heap of features including tables! http://www.jarte.com/jarte_30_features.html

Guess I'll give it a go over the next month...