Clippings Disappear

Script Debugger Beta Testing
#1

I wanted to edit the text of a clipping. I selected the clippings pane of the inspectors tab and clicked edit clipping.

The clipping opened in TextEdit (I haven’t changed the open with for those files on this Mac yet)

I made a minor change to the text. First time it was just moving quote marks. Second time I just typed a space at the end of the line and then deleted it.

I clicked save and the clipping disappeared from the inspector and the clippings menu.

It’s still in the folder. My thinking is that after making the edits TextEdit changed its format to rtf.

The problem is that TextEdit doesn’t have an option to save a file as text. You can duplicate a file and then save it with the .txt extension.

In short, I’ve resolved the issue for myself on this Mac, but this could be an issue for others, especially new users. Not sure how to fix it in SD.

→ Script Debugger 8.0.1 (8A36)
→ TextEdit 1.16 (365.2)
→ Mac OS 11.6 (20G165)

#2

It does here — Format -> Make Plain Text.

#3

I don’t think that changing the text format changes the file type.

But, even so, when I open a clipping from the inspector I see:

Format → Make Rich Text

And if I make any changes in TextEdit it gets saved without a file extension.

#4

The menu command toggles between Make Rich Text/Make Plain Text, depending on the format. And it changes the extension here (you may be set not to show the extension by default).

#5

I’ll make a movie.

The files are .txt format and the extension shows in Finder (although not in SD).

When I click edit on the file name in inspectors pane, the file opens in TextEdit by default in plain text. There is not an option to “make plain text” because it already is. The only option is to “make rich text.”

If I edit and close the clipping the extension is removed (in the Finder) and the clipping disappears from the inspector pane and the clipping menu. If I add the extension back in the finder it reappears.

(It sounds like this may be more of a TextEdit bug.)

#6

A little more information. These were clippings transferred from my old system. It seems that the ones that had this issue did not have a .txt extension, but they were plain text files, and SD was displaying them in the clipping menu and inspectors pane.

When TextEdit saves them they disappear. When BBEdit saves them they remain.

The Kind of those files is “Simple Text Document”

#7

Yep. FWIW, I reckon editing text files in TextEdit is a bad idea. It can do odd things, including mixing encodings. Stick to BBEdit.

#8

Yes, it’s too bad that TextEdit is the default.

#9

It takes all of 30 seconds in the Finder to change it. Choose one file, Get Info, change Open with:, click Change All….

#10

Yup. I did that, but changed it back, in case y’all wanted to know about an issue your users might encounter.