Cocoa Formatting Trick
A Mac OS X Hints reader posted an interesting tip today about being able to copy and paste formatting between blocks of text:
Copy and paste formats in Cocoa apps
Did you know that you can use command-3 and command-4 to copy and paste the formatting (font, style, size) of one block of text to another? Just select one bit of text, hit command-3, select another bit of text, and hit command-4. The format of the first bit will be applied to the second bit.
Tips like this raise the issue of documentation: where is this particular tip documented, for example? Mac OS X ships with a pathetic little booklet whose sole purpose seems to be to give you something non-taxing to read on the train ride home from the computer store. It certainly doesn’t mention anything as ‘buried’ as this. I bought and read “Mac OS X: The Missing Manual” by David Pogue and I can’t recall seeing it in there, either. Is Apple looking at documentation as a “third-party opportunity”?
I paid good money for the OS and, like anything I pay good money for, I expect the manufacturer to enable me to use it to its full extent. This is encouraged in several ways: by making the product desirable; by designing it well so that its features are organised and presented to users logically and plainly; and, most importantly, through good documentation.
Imagine if you bought a new 7-series BMW, for example, but there was no manual included. The computerised suspension and engine management and anti-lock braking will make you feel great, but you never have to interact with any of these things directly (just like pre-emptive multitasking or protected memory in OS X). What do you do, however, when you want to adjust the seating? The 7-series seats have more controls than an Aeron chair, for god’s sake, and while you’d undoubtedly be able to figure out the obvious ones, the finer details may be invisible without documentation. If you had to rely on other 7-series owners to tell you how to do these sorts of things, you’d be feeling pretty pissed off I imagine after plonking down all that money (your ego – the better-than-thou indulgence of which is the chief reason why anyone buys a BMW I suspect – would also be a little bruised). You would certainly not want your command of your new machine to be dependent on third-parties.
Yet computer manufacturers expect this of us all the time. And we go along with it.
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Posted to Computers • 2002.06.07 (Fri) • 23:42
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