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Copy portions of text clippings
Authored by: scotty321 on Jul 21, '06 08:48:24AM

Unbelievable. This is an amazing hint!! I never knew this!! I was always dragging-and-dropping my text clippings onto TextEdit to open them & copy/paste them.

To answer the above reader, the trick to getting text clippings to work is to HOLD DOWN YOUR MOUSE on the selected text for a few seconds BEFORE dragging the selected text to your desktop.



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Copy portions of text clippings
Authored by: osxpounder on Jul 21, '06 02:33:32PM

I, too, was bummed to discover how broken .textclipping files were in OSX, but I did notice from a hint here in the past that I could open a .textclipping, do CMD-C, and the whole clipping would be copied.

Since it's impossible to see what I'm selecting in a clipping, I just paste it and then do my select and cut in the app I pasted into. I stopped dragging and dropping clippings because it so often fails.



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Copy portions of text clippings
Authored by: osxpounder on Jul 21, '06 02:37:44PM

Yep, that trick works, but it's annoying since you must modify your behavior for just one or two apps like Safari -- i.e., it's a big no-no in interface design [actually several no-nos]. I hope they will fix this bug eventually.

It's also harmful if you suffer from RSI to do that extra-long button holding, so I don't do it. I usually mark the text, CMD-C, and paste elsewhere if I find myself copying text from a web page more than a few times consecutively.



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Copy portions of text clippings
Authored by: chyna4xena on Jul 23, '06 10:44:02PM

I'm on 10.3.9, and I have found that the necessity of holding, and indeed the length I must hold before commencing the drag, is not dependent on the application but on how taxed my CPU is.

When the computer is slowish, all apps require me to hold for 2 or 3 seconds before dragging, occasionally more. If the computer isn't being taxed, I can drag after about a second, from Safari as well as other apps.

This is expected, because Safari uses the same text-and-mouse-handling routines as all the other Cocoa apps - there is no difference in the interface so no no-no has been committed!

I have found that the real difference with Safari is that it tends to exhaust less-capable CPUs. My 1GHz G4 starts hitting molasses with only about 6 tabs/windows open; I've been trying several hints to speed it up, without success so far. Also, Safari seems to slow down despite my CPU being reported as only slightly taxed, so it isn't always clear from MenuMeters whether you'll get to drag promptly or have to wait.

The key is to watch the cursor - whilst over text (highlighted or not) the cursor will be the standard I-beam. When you click and hold a selection, it will change after a pause to the arrow pointer. When it changes, you can move the mouse and start dragging. Dragging before that (when it is still an I-beam) will start a new selection.



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