The KM Format menu

Questions & Suggestions
1

What can be formatted using KM’s Edit > Format menu item?

2

I believe it’s a standard Apple menu. It’s for use with text. Not sure how useful (if at all) it is for KM.

3

It is standard, but the developer has control over if it is shown or not.

The only use I see for the Format menu is with rich text.
Since we don't have any editable rich text in the KM Editor, I don't see any need for it.

My error. See Peter's reply below.

1 Like
4

Formatting works in the Insert Styled text by Pasting action:

20160525-093625.png860×314 48.1 KB

Formatting also works in the named Clipboards preferences panel.

5

Sigh. I’ve even done that before. Make text blue. Make text italic. Etc.

6

Thanks for the info, Peter. I don't know how I missed that Action, but I've never used it. One of the many hidden corners of Keyboard Maestro I'm still discovering. :wink:

7

I thought for a moment that I could use that to create macros that turn selected text bold, italic, strikethrough, etc. Alas, the formatting doesn’t seem to work on variables like %NamedClipboard%Temporary%.

8

“Blue Style” Macro -- make the selected text blue (RGB = 16, 78, 139).

I will be posting a "style" palette group soon. Just need to add some comments and more styles to the palette.

9

Formatting works on variables. It does not work on clipboards since they already have their own style.

If you want to completely eradicate the clipboard style and use the style in the Insert Styled Text by Pasting action, then first set a variable to the clipboard value, and then use it in the action:

  • Set Variable Temp to %NamedClipboard%Temporary%
  • Insert Styled Text by Pasting %Variable%Temp%
10

That makes sense, and this is an old macro, but why does it work? I have about 20 of them that do things like this: color red, blue, etc., gray 10%, 20%, etc.; red strikethrough, etc.

In fact, I found the following in the Text group in the KM Macro Library:

11

The Apply Style action works on clipboards, what I meant was that you cannot use the style within an Insert Styled Text by Pasting action to style a %NamedClipboard% token, because the latter already has its own style.