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Wish List: Instant Local Hyperlink

D

DavidCar

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 19, 2004
525
0
I've been surfing the internet for info on a certain topic. So I now have various PDF snapshots with bits of information, and i want to remember which article is the most worthwhile and what information is where.

So I wish...

that I could use TextEdit to write a few comments, then have a link, like an internet link, that would open the document on my computer that contains the information I am commenting on. It would be nice if I could just drag the PDF to my TextEdit comments, and instead of the whole PDF being imported, just have the link appear after my TextEdit comments.

This shouldn't be too far fetched.

I thought such links could be made, but I don't know how. How hard would it be to modify the finder control click on a document to say "Copy link to Clipboard" so I could then paste that local link anywhere I wanted to?
 
The easiest way to do this may be to write in HTML. That way you can just write a link to your PDF's. You could even serve your files on Apache so you could access them from other computers.

Probably not the answer you wanted...but just a thought.
 
I don't speak HTML. But in studying the issue by looking at the CNN webpage, it appears that this link text:

•*Hit man apologizes before his execution

somehow conceals this link:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/03/08/execution.ap/index.html

probably using this HTML statement:

<a href="/2005/LAW/03/08/execution.ap/index.html">Hit man apologizes before his execution</a>

I can copy the link to TextEdit, which only shows the text but jumps to the link when clicked, but I cannot within TextEdit create such a link from scratch, as far as I can tell.

If I could do that, the next step would be to create a local link something like: file:///Users/davidcar/Desktop/CNN.html
 
You've got the idea! You wont get these links when you open in textpad, but you will if you open in safari. The html page starts with <htlm> and the content goes in a <body> tag. You need to close tags you open - ie, when you've finished you content, close with </body> and then close the page with </html>.

Ok that's html 101 - you can get a better idea of what I'm saying by looking at the source of almost any page on the net. However you might want to hang out for 10.4 with the widget that's mentioned on the Mac Rumor's front page.

Another option might be Sticky Brain. Some people swear by it - I just found it a bit too much trouble (I'm still a "make a folder structure" kind of guy who's looking forward to Spotlight!).

Good luck!
 
I can copy/paste a link from safari to textedit and it still works as a link. Then if I open the saved textedit document checking the checkbox "ignore rich text commands" then the HTML code shows up.

I was then able to edit my saved CNN link to open a PDF document on my desktop in the Preview application, so I think that what I want to do is possible. When I've worked out my router problems I want to try modifying TextEdit to include a menu option "Insert Local Hyperlink" so I can add links to my PDF files within a TextEdit commentary.
 
FWIW, I've found that I need to learn RTF to make local hyper links work nicely. Just letting the system translate an HTML phrase to RTF ends up messing up the subsequent formatting. And if anyone knows a simple command to extract a simple filename from an absolute URL string, I'd appreciate a clue.
 
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