Extended RTF Editing Features... a workaround

[cnewtonne]

Hi all,
I spend 2 days trying to figure out how to be able to use what Kinook terms as 'extended editing features' in UR without the current hassle. I just got tired of having to 'cntrl+j' just to apply a text style or indent a line. I totally believe it is not fair on Kinook's part to suggest to their users to purchase and us MSWord to be able to perform such basic RTF operations. What is even more perplexing, is that the RTF control used does support these features, it is just that Kinook's did not build the interface to them. I have no idea why is this the case. Any how, I can not whine too much because UR remains one of my favorite apps and I do appreciate all the ingenious work behind it. It is just I expect this app to be the best always.

To work around this issue, I was able to come up with a solution that allows me to do the following right in the native text editor ...
- create and apply text syles
- indent in both directions
- insert tables
- do whatever else I like to do that I can do in MSWord.

On the downside, it will cost you some money i.e. $30 to be exact.

This solution is based on the fact that If you paste formatted text in the editor then delete it, the editor will retain the formatting. If you follow that with any typing, the new text will acquire this format. To do this, I wanted a tool that allows me to capture the format, save it, and retrieve it in an efficient way i.e. hotkeys or shortext at most. Once done, the tool needs to be a able to automate some key presses to go back and do some cleaning like backspaces and deletes and so forth.

The only automation tool I found (and I looked at 10 of them), is one called Perfect Keyboard (http://www.pitrinec.com/pkindex.htm ). Simply put, I copied all my header styles, paragraph formats, tables, ...etc. Then created macro that apply them on existing text as well as new blank lines using windows Clipboad calls. It worked flawlessly and I'm happy with it.

If you are fed up and tired of UR RTF restrictions and can not wait till Kinooks come up with a decent RFT alternative in the 21st century, try this trick. If you have questions, just reply and I will be happy to follow up.

Lastly, I would like to appeal to Kinook, please, please, please, put this feature request on top of your list. It is just to much pain to cope with the lack of it. I saw a post on this forum somewhere where you replied that you are working a enchaining RTF editing features in the next release. This post was in 2005. It is 2007 now and the 3rd generation of UR and we still have to use word to indent a line or format text styles.

Please share your thoughts.

Thank you all.