Manipulating PLAIN text on the clipboard

[JonathanC at ag.nsw.gov.au]

On 08-Mar-04 6:38 PM, I wrote:

> I have some scripts that manipulate text on the clipboard (turn text to 
> uppercase/lowercase etc., add up a column of numbers, wrap/unwrap text 
> etc.) but I can't seem to get them to leave the text as PLAIN text.
> 
> Here's one of them:
> 
> on mouseUp
>   put the clipboardData["text"] into temp
>   set the clipboardData["text"] to wrap(temp,75)
> end mouseUp
> 
> No matter where I copy the text FROM, no matter what font and size it 
was, 
> it always ends up after pasting (assuming I paste it into an application 

> that supports styled text) as Lucida Grande, 11pt.
> 
> I'm sure the short script above is where the problem lies, but just in 
> case, here's the function it calls:
> 
> function wrap str,n
>   ...

To which J. Landman Gay <jacque at hyperactivesw.com> replied:

> Looks like there may be a bug in the wrap function that causes it to go 
> into an infinite loop, at least in some cases. It can get stuck at 
> "delete word 1 to wordCount-1 of para". So maybe what is happening is 
> that the repeat loop is going around in circles while you are pasting 
> into another app, and what you paste is actually the original copied 
> text rather than the modified text.

Thanks for pointing out the potential error in my wrap function. However, 
I'm sure that's not the cause of the problem:
1. If I copy some continuous text in 10pt Verdana (in Word), switch to 
Rev, click a button with the mouseUp handler above, switch back to Word 
and paste, I get SUCCESSFULLY WRAPPED text, in 11pt Lucida Grande.
2. Exactly the same thing happens with similar buttons that call different 
functions (changeCase, unwrap, emailQuote).


> BTW, there is an example of a word-wrap script in the Cookbook in the 
> Help docs.

Thanks - definitely more robust than mine. I used it instead (and changed 
"wrap(...)" to "wordWrapped(...)"in my button script) but it made no 
difference. :-(

Oh well. 

Jonathan Cooper
Manager of Information / Website
Art Gallery of New South Wales
Sydney, Australia
http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au