I'm hoping to take text that I've written in a text editor and paste into Inkscape.

When I do, nothing happens. No text appears. If I have something previously copied in the Inkscape clipboard, that element remains in the clipboard, regardless of what I've copied in other programs.

X11: XQuartz 2.3.6
Inkscape 0.48
Mac OSX 10.6.8

I have tried both keyboard shortcuts (command-C out of Inkscape, and Ctrl-V in Inkscape), as well as menu selection (Edit/Copy out of Inkscape, Edit/Paste in Inkscape).

I have tried both pasting the text directly into the Text box created in layout view as the first text entered, and also tried typing text and pasting "into" the typed text, and also tried selecting all the text typed, and pasting to replace it. No results with any of these efforts.

I've already searched these forums using the following search strings:
pasting text into inkscape
text paste
pasting text macintosh
import text macintosh
import text

and found nothing useful in the first 25 results for each search.

This seems like a pretty basic functionality -- any clue how I can get it to work?

Welcome to InkscapeForum!

There are some issues with using Inkscape on a Mac. (http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/65/welcome15.gif) I don't know of any affecting text, but there is a bug with pasting on a Mac. However the bug is not that pasting doesn't work, but that pasting converts the vector object to raster. Honestly, I don't use a Mac, so I don't know if pasting from another program would be affected, or whether it applies to text or not.

When you're trying to paste text, do you have the Text tool engaged? If not, try choosing the Text tool, click once on the canvas, and type a couple of letters. Then try Paste. In my experience, there has to be a text box on the page, to paste into, and typing a couple of letters creates a text box.

If that doesn't help, then I'm not sure what else to try. Maybe a Mac user could offer some comments?

Thank you for the reply!

As it turns out, some lateral thinking turned up the answer: it wasn't an Inkscape problem per se, but an X11/Pasteboard/Clipboard problem. I had to leave Inkscape and adjust the Pasteboard settings in X11 to link up to the native Mac clipboard.

For the record, the text did paste as text and not a raster.

Awesome! Thanks for letting us know

"adjust the Pasteboard settings in X11 to link up to the native Mac clipboard."

I use a Mac also, and there are others here, I am sure, that have run into this problem.
Could you possibly mention any specifics about how this can be done with X11.

Where are, or how does one adjust the pasteboard settings in X11 ?


Thanks

GAngus wrote:I use a Mac also, and there are others here, I am sure, that have run into this problem.
Could you possibly mention any specifics about how this can be done with X11.

Where are, or how does one adjust the pasteboard settings in X11 ?

Did you upgrade from Tiger to a current version of Mac OS X, and use a current version of X11 by now? Most answers to this generic question won't be of help to users with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and its ancient XFree86-based version of X11 (IIRC the feature to sync between the OS X Pasteboard and the X11 Clipboard was only implemented in later versions of X11/XQuartz (on Leopard), along with the known problem it introduced with copy&pasting vector objects in Inkscape >= 0.47).

MattShepherd wrote:As it turns out, some lateral thinking turned up the answer: it wasn't an Inkscape problem per se, but an X11/Pasteboard/Clipboard problem. I had to leave Inkscape and adjust the Pasteboard settings in X11 to link up to the native Mac clipboard.

Hopefully you didn't activate all pasteboard settings in the X11 preferences (for your task you only need '[x] Enable Syncing]' along with '[x] Update CLIPBOARD when Pasteboard changes') - if you enabled automatic syncing in the other direction as well ('[ ] Update Pasteboard when CLIPBOARD changes'), you'll hit the well known issue as described in the Inkscape FAQ: Copying and pasting in Inkscape creates pixellated images instead of copying the vector objects.

See also these comments in earlier topics:

• Re: Mac Snow Leopard?
• Re: Copy/Paste in MacOS with X11 - question on known bug
• Re: Layering triangles, but the box covers lower layers

Yes.... It's me again, thanks
And yes, I' m still back here in Tiger in the ancient land of XFree86.

I was just hoping that there may be some crafty way to link up the clipboards
with, perhaps, some well-aimed symlinks or such.

Those preference options don't even exist in my version of X11.
(X11 1.0 XFree86 4.4.0 Apple 2003)

Oh well... back to my many workarounds.
Thank you