Tip - How to copy Control Page elements between Macs

Just worked out how to exchange / copy Control Page elements outside of the Apple mac where the copy is being done (e.g. via the Indigo forums) and thought I should share my findings

As you may know, when you selected elements while editing Control Pages you can drag and drop them from one Control Page to another or to a file on the same mac for later use. This can be extremely useful when developing similar layout Control Pages. When saved to a file the file format is textClipping.

Of course another use is to share Control Page layouts with other users. This is where it gets more complicated as typically when you save the selected elements to a file the resultant textClipping file has an apparent length of zero bytes = not very useful, especially when you copy it to a new location! This is because the actual contents are stored in the file's resource fork not the data fork (see textClipping on wikipedia) and OS X loses sight of the resource fork when the file is copied.

However a workaround is to proceed as follows:

1. To save the Control Page Elements:
   
   1. Launch TextEdit (or your preferred text editor) and make sure you have an empty document
   2. Select the required elements from the Control Page being edited and drag into the TextEdit window - the window will now contain the Control Page element definitions
   3. Do a save from TextEdit into a folder - you will now have a txt or rtf file that can be shared
2. To Retrieve the Control Page Elements:
   
   1. Double click the file previously saved (and now probably moved to a new location such as dropbox) to display the saved Control Page element definitions
   2. Press CMD-A (Select All) to select the file contents
   3. Drag the selected text into the Control Page you want to edit - the contents will be transferred and should appear in the Control Page

The only caveat is that copying of Control Page element definitions only seems to work on Control Pages being edited on the mac running the Indigo server. It doesn't seem to work when doing Control Page editing on a client AFAICS.

So here is a test for you to try out. Do a Select all on the code below and drag into a Control Page edit window: :

Code: Select all

<PageElemList type="vector"><PageElem type="dict"><ActionGroup type="dict"><ActionSteps type="vector"><Action type="dict"><Class type="integer">0</Class><ObjVers type="integer">12</ObjVers></Action></ActionSteps><ObjVers type="integer">2</ObjVers></ActionGroup><CaptionCurHeight type="integer">48</CaptionCurHeight><CaptionCurWidth type="integer">420</CaptionCurWidth><CaptionFontColor type="string">FF 00 00</CaptionFontColor><CaptionFontType type="integer">1</CaptionFontType><CaptionName type="string">A Test of Control Page</CaptionName><CaptionPlacement type="integer">4</CaptionPlacement><CaptionPointSize type="integer">34</CaptionPointSize><CaptionWraps type="bool">false</CaptionWraps><ControlType type="integer">100</ControlType><ObjVers type="integer">9</ObjVers><Position type="string">453 53</Position><ShowStateImage type="bool">true</ShowStateImage><ShowStateText type="bool">false</ShowStateText><Size type="string">0 0</Size><TargetElemSubKey type="string">onOffState</TargetElemSubKey></PageElem><PageElem type="dict"><ActionGroup type="dict"><ActionSteps type="vector"><Action type="dict"><Class type="integer">0</Class><ObjVers type="integer">12</ObjVers></Action></ActionSteps><ObjVers type="integer">2</ObjVers></ActionGroup><CaptionCurHeight type="integer">48</CaptionCurHeight><CaptionCurWidth type="integer">434</CaptionCurWidth><CaptionFontColor type="string">00 80 FF</CaptionFontColor><CaptionFontType type="integer">1</CaptionFontType><CaptionName type="string">Copying Between Macs</CaptionName><CaptionPlacement type="integer">4</CaptionPlacement><CaptionPointSize type="integer">34</CaptionPointSize><CaptionWraps type="bool">false</CaptionWraps><ControlType type="integer">100</ControlType><ObjVers type="integer">9</ObjVers><Position type="string">467 113</Position><ShowStateImage type="bool">true</ShowStateImage><ShowStateText type="bool">false</ShowStateText><Size type="string">0 0</Size><TargetElemSubKey type="string">onOffState</TargetElemSubKey></PageElem></PageElemList>



The definition above was dragged and dropped into a this posting from the Control Page editor

Nice tip Jon.

Dave

Ah cool, I'd noticed that issue with someone else's control pages a while ago, but couldn't find a solution!