Sheesh! A New Text Edit Annoyance

I received a Word document as an e-mail attachment. I saved it to my HD
and then went to the Finder and selected Open With > TextEdit. When I
tried to edit the text I got the following:

"Are you sure you want to modify the document in place? Modifying the
document in place might cause you to lose some of the original
formatting. Would you like to duplicate the document first?"
"Overwrite, Cancel, Duplicate"

No s**t? You mean if I change the document it will be changed? Really?
Thanks for that valuable tip. Perhaps I should sleep on it and decide
if I really want to fix those spelling and punctuation errors, or paste
the text into a web page as-is and look like an illiterate.

Am I sure? The general answer was best expressed in this quote the late
Richard Feynman: "I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not
knowing.... I have approximate answers and possible beliefs... but I'm
not absolutely sure of anything..."
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/prog...and/archive/fe
ynman/>

My specific answer is not so eloquent: "Yes, I'm sure I want to edit
this f**king document. I have Windows 7 installed on this MBPro as
well. It's a very good, very stable, and yes, very secure operating
system, but it annoys the hell out of me with its constant pestering.
If the Mac OS is going to annoy me in the same way, why would I use it
instead of Windows, which still has far more great software than the
Mac? So let me make my own decisions and my own mistakes, if mistakes
they be, and stop mothering me."

--
I agree with almost everything that you have said and almost everything that
you will say in your entire life.

usenet *at* davidillig dawt cawm

Davoud wrote:

> "Are you sure you want to modify the document in place? Modifying the
> document in place might cause you to lose some of the original
> formatting. Would you like to duplicate the document first?"
> "Overwrite, Cancel, Duplicate"


Considering the undesirable "auto save" feature, this dialogue is
necessary, especially since text edit is a subset of word, so the minute
you change something, you lose the original word document which will
likely be replaced by an rtf version with many features removed.

In message <280720121034226769%>
Davoud <> wrote:
> "Are you sure you want to modify the document in place? Modifying the
> document in place might cause you to lose some of the original
> formatting. Would you like to duplicate the document first?"
> "Overwrite, Cancel, Duplicate"

> No s**t? You mean if I change the document it will be changed? Really?

No, not just changed. Textedit doesn't write .doc format. Making changes
in a word file in textedit will do a lot more than simply makes changes,
it will destroy the original file and you will lose elements that you
may not realize you are losing. Thus the perfectly sensible warning.

> My specific answer is not so eloquent: "Yes, I'm sure I want to edit
> this f**king document. I have Windows 7 installed on this MBPro as
> well. It's a very good, very stable, and yes, very secure operating
> system, but it annoys the hell out of me with its constant pestering.

Lithium.

--
Generalizations are always inaccurate.

In article <50142a8b$0$1482$c3e8da3$ m>,
JF Mezei <> wrote:

> Davoud wrote:
>
> > "Are you sure you want to modify the document in place? Modifying the
> > document in place might cause you to lose some of the original
> > formatting. Would you like to duplicate the document first?"
> > "Overwrite, Cancel, Duplicate"
>
>
> Considering the undesirable "auto save" feature, this dialogue is
> necessary, especially since text edit is a subset of word, so the minute
> you change something, you lose the original word document which will
> likely be replaced by an rtf version with many features removed.

One time Feynman explained it was easier to set various constants to one
in order to do calculations. For example from my poor memory c=1,
hbar=1, e-1, etc. Then when all done, you put the symbols back in. When
asked about using dimensions in order to detect mistakes, he replied,
"Don't make mistakes."

Now, if you are a Feynman, you should have no problem editing the
original file.

--

Sam

Conservatives are against Darwinism but for natural selection.
Liberals are for Darwinism but totally against any selection.

In article <>,
Lewis <> wrote:

> In message <280720121034226769%>
> Davoud <> wrote:
> > "Are you sure you want to modify the document in place? Modifying the
> > document in place might cause you to lose some of the original
> > formatting. Would you like to duplicate the document first?"
> > "Overwrite, Cancel, Duplicate"
>
> > No s**t? You mean if I change the document it will be changed? Really?
>
> No, not just changed. Textedit doesn't write .doc format. Making changes
> in a word file in textedit will do a lot more than simply makes changes,
> it will destroy the original file and you will lose elements that you
> may not realize you are losing. Thus the perfectly sensible warning.
>
> > My specific answer is not so eloquent: "Yes, I'm sure I want to edit
> > this f**king document. I have Windows 7 installed on this MBPro as
> > well. It's a very good, very stable, and yes, very secure operating
> > system, but it annoys the hell out of me with its constant pestering.
>
> Lithium.

My sister has a better track record with a mix of lithium and
Welbrutran. While you're on it, no caffeine or alcohol. And drink LOTS
of water.

--
DeeDee, don't press that button! DeeDee! NO! Dee...
[I filter all Goggle Groups posts, so any reply may be automatically ignored]

Salmon Egg:

> Now, if you are a Feynman, you should have no problem editing the
> original file.

Speaking only for my part as OP in this thread, I compared my answer to
Feynman's by saying "My specific answer is not so eloquent..." That
could be taken as an indication that I am aware of the shortcomings
that keep me out of Feynman's league.

For my money, no one in 20th-century physics, or thus far in the 21st
century, is in Feynman's league--not even Einstein.

--
I agree with almost everything that you have said and almost everything that
you will say in your entire life.

usenet *at* davidillig dawt cawm

In article <280720122229040430%>, Davoud <>
wrote:

> For my money, no one in 20th-century physics, or thus far in the 21st
> century, is in Feynman's league--not even Einstein.

Gasp! If Davoud says it, IT MUST BE TRUE!

--- Joe

In article <jmsfe9->,
Paul Sture <> wrote:

> On Sat, 28 Jul 2012 10:34:22 -0400, Davoud wrote:
>
> > I received a Word document as an e-mail attachment. I saved it to my HD
> > and then went to the Finder and selected Open With > TextEdit. When I
> > tried to edit the text I got the following:
> >
> > "Are you sure you want to modify the document in place? Modifying the
> > document in place might cause you to lose some of the original
> > formatting.
> > Would you like to duplicate the document first?" "Overwrite, Cancel,
> > Duplicate"
> >
> > No s**t? You mean if I change the document it will be changed? Really?
> > Thanks for that valuable tip.
>
> The relevant phrase is "Modifying the document in place might cause you
> to lose some of the original formatting."
>
> Just like importing a Word document into Pages can give you warnings that
> the original formatting will be lost.

Or even reading files written with Windows versions of Word into Mac
versions, since they don't have feature parity. Although in this case,
you often get the warning at the time it's reading the document, telling
you that some particular item in the original will not be included.

--
Barry Margolin,
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***

On 2012-07-28 14:34:22 +0000, Davoud said:

> I received a Word document as an e-mail attachment. I saved it to my HD
> and then went to the Finder and selected Open With > TextEdit. When I
> tried to edit the text I got the following:
>
> "Are you sure you want to modify the document in place? Modifying the
> document in place might cause you to lose some of the original
> formatting. Would you like to duplicate the document first?"
> "Overwrite, Cancel, Duplicate"

That's a natural consequence of auto-save, resume and versions wherein,
in theory, the user doesn't have to remember to close or save documents.

In practice, it makes for corner cases where you have to make explicit choices.

You imported a document and auto-save will cause it to be modified more
than just the changes you explicitly made because TextEdit cannot
handle all of Word's formatting options.

It was a very reasonable question.

In an earlier OS and verstion of TextEdit you'd not have been presented
with those choices, but rather when the document opened, it would have
been explicitly an imported document and when you closed it, or hit the
Save button, it would not have automatically overwritten the original,
either but rather it would have presented you with a SaveAs dialog box.
Would that similarly have caused you to complain about "pestering"?
It's not really all that different - you cannot import a document and
then overwrite it without explicitly doing so -- that's a *good* thing.

Davoud:
> > I received a Word document as an e-mail attachment. I saved it to my HD
> > and then went to the Finder and selected Open With > TextEdit. When I
> > tried to edit the text I got the following:
> >
> > "Are you sure you want to modify the document in place? Modifying the
> > document in place might cause you to lose some of the original
> > formatting. Would you like to duplicate the document first?"
> > "Overwrite, Cancel, Duplicate"

Bread:
> That's a natural consequence of auto-save, resume and versions wherein,
> in theory, the user doesn't have to remember to close or save documents.

> In practice, it makes for corner cases where you have to make explicit
> choices.

> You imported a document and auto-save will cause it to be modified more
> than just the changes you explicitly made because TextEdit cannot
> handle all of Word's formatting options.
>
> It was a very reasonable question.

It was a question that assumed that I did not know that editing a .docx
with TextEdit would change it. It was my /intention? to change the
document and save it as RTF, otherwise I would have opened the document
in Word for Windows or simply used Quick Look to read without opening.
I propose a compromise: a "Do not show this message again" box for
those who are able to grok it the first time.

As a cabinetmaker I know one sense of the phrase corner case, but I
don't think that is the sense in which you used it. What is a corner
case in your context?

--
I agree with almost everything that you have said and almost everything that
you will say in your entire life.

usenet *at* davidillig dawt cawm