Import doesn't work the way it used to

Hello.

Today was probably the first time I had rebooted my machine since I downloaded EF 1.4.2. And now, all of a sudden, when I highlight text in either Safari or NetNewsWire, and use either the Services menu, the copy+import from clipboard, or the keystroke combination to capture the text, I am always getting a WebArchive File. This is new. I used to get (and really liked being able to get) a RTFD file from these methods of import.

As an FYI, I changed the option in Preferences for “Web page format” to be “Rich text with images”, and even logged out and logged back in, but there was no change. I can use the bookmarklet from Safari if I want an RTFD of the entire page, but when I only want a portion of the page (happens all the time), the bookmarklet doesn’t help me at all. So what I have to do is capture the highlighted text into a WebArchive, then Convert for editing later. There is no way I’m going to start doing 2 steps for something I have been doing one step for for months. I am using OS X 10.4.11.

Please tell me this is something that can be fixed. I really don’t want to have WebArchive files, and if that’s all I can get from now on from Safari, I may have to consider using another program from now on.

Please advise.

Thanks,
Robin

This was an intentional change. The Web archive format preserves more of the original data. It can always be converted to RTFD, but not vice-versa.

Do you prefer RTFD because it’s editable or for some other reason?

Do you want to set the format in the preferences to “Rich text with images” and use that for full pages and with the service? Or do you want full pages to be Web archives and partial pages to be RTFD?

First, thanks for letting me know this was intentional. I thought something happened to my system. I didn’t see this mentioned in release notes anywhere, but maybe I missed it.

In the past, when I have compared the relative file sizes of the same content in RTFD versus WebArchive, many times the WebArchive is a lot larger. For just a few files, it’s not an appreciable difference, but multiply that times the many many clips I make, and it starts to add up to something.

That said, if I’m able to selectively choose text and not have every last image in the WebArchive, then maybe it won’t “cost” too much in the way of disk space. I guess I’ll play with it and see what happens.

So what does that preference setting actually do? I guess I don’t understand what it’s intended for.

Thanks.

It was part of this item:

When importing a selection of text via the Services menu, EagleFiler now stores the source URL if the text was in a WebKit-based view (requires Mac OS X 10.5).

I don’t think it’s the images that are causing the file size difference. In fact, from what I’ve seen, the Web archive format is smarter about only storing one copy of an image that appears multiple times.

The Web page format preference controls the format when you import a Web page, i.e. use the capture key or tell EagleFiler to import a URL, and EagleFiler connects to the server and downloads the whole page. If you import a selection of text (via the service, drag and drop, importing the clipboard, etc.), it’s just text, not a whole page, so the preference doesn’t apply.

Michael,

I think the frustration for me is in grabbing the whole page and not being able to manipulate the WebArchive file without converting it to RTFD first. Now that I can selectively clip, that’s somewhat mitigated, but again, if in the middle of the text that I want are large ads as images, I will have to capture the WebArchive, convert, and then strip those out, instead of just being able to delete the images inline in the file.

Thanks,
Robin

So you would like a preference to not import text in Web archive format?

Or are you saying that if it’s set to import whole pages as RTFD that text should be imported that way, too? (I don’t think this makes that much sense in general—who wants a PDF of a small selection of text?)

I think that would be great. But don’t worry about it so much - as I said, as long as I can selectively grab for the WebArchive file, I shouldn’t have this problem too often.

Thanks.

Michael - just as an FYI, I clipped a page just now as a Web Archive file. When I converted it to RTFD, it halved the size of the file. Again, this is not a big deal for one file, but half is really something over time. I attached the two files for you to see what I mean.

Thanks,
Robin

MIchael,
Thanks for a great - and rapidly improving – product.
But I have to say that not being able to import rich text directly is a drawback for me. Since my primary use for Eaglefiler is to import web articles which I will then mark up/highlight while reading, I’d like more options for directly importing the rich text of a page. Adding the extra steps of having to convert for editing and trashing the original seems less than ideal.
At the very least, I’d like to see “Convert for Editing” added to the contextual menu and given a keyboard shortcut.
I suspect I’m not alone in this.
Thanks again,
Jack

You can import rich text directly, if you import the whole page. I will be adding a preference to import selected text in RTF (instead of Web archive) format as well. Does that address your concerns?

Sorry, I did realize that you could rtf the whole page, but the resulting messiness with most web pages is a hassle.

Thanks for adding a preference for importing selected text. Yes, that should do the trick.

Cheers

Jack

EagleFiler 1.4.3 adds an esoteric preference to make EagleFiler import the selected text from a Web view in RTF(D) format rather than as a Web archive.

Thanks for adding text format import. The fact that the source url is appended to the text inside the document is very useful and guarantees that the link will be permanent, easily accessible part of the RTF file. Brilliant.

Thanks Michael! as usual, the best service anywhere. :slight_smile: