TextEdit

The TextEdit application, the versatile text editor and word processor included with Mac OS X (covered in more detail in Chapter 6), provides two services:

• Open a file by name

• Create a new file containing selected content

To open a file by name, as shown in Figure 11-10, you select text that specifies a full path to the file and then choose Services TextEdit Open Selected File from the Application menu. If the file cannot be found, an error message appears stating that the file could not be opened; however, the error message doesn’t tell you why the attempt failed. Note that the selection must be a file that TextEdit can open.

Figure 11-10: Select a full path (lower left), choose the Open Selected File command (top), and the file opens (bottom right).

You can also select a block of text and other media. Then choose Services TextEdit New Window Containing Selection from the Application menu to create a new TextEdit document using the selected media, as shown in Figure 11-11. Because both text and other media are combined, you can edit the result. This service is a useful adjunct to clipping files.

Figure 11-11: Use the New Window Containing Selection command (top) to create a TextEdit document (bottom right) from selected text (bottom left).