A: A standard cross-platform ASCII text data format is preferred over a platform-specific proprietary data format.
In general, where we have had a choice between closed/proprietary and open/standards-based/cross-platform/interchangeable, especially in the area of data formats, file formats, we have leaned heavily towards the latter. This is what you need on a cross-platform internet.
P.S. Clippings are an abomination - they were a MacOS hack because Apple didn't want to address standard data format issues. For example, why do you need text documents and text clippings? Why do you need sound documents and sound clippings (try dragging a sound out from the Scrapbook, and then moving that file into your System file to use as a System sound - guess what, it doesn't work! - a trivial illustration of the flaw in the clippings design) etc.
The topic of various MacOS proprietary file formats comes up every few months. Anytime there is a cross-platform, or more standards based (W3C etc.) file format available, we will attempt to choose that over a format which may be limited to particular OS version of a particular computer. Why? Cross-platform and standards based file formats are more easily portable, and typically last longer without requiring lossy conversion utilities (How many of you have old documents that you can no longer open without some sort of lossy conversion?). No Mac is an island. Files you create and manipulate should optimally be easily portable to whatever other computing devices you use (not just PCs - think Palm, Handspring, Psion, CE devices, Cell phones etc.) Examples of proprietary vs. cross-platform/standard file formats: 1. Bad: MacOS web location file Good: cross-platform (and text readable) .url file Note that .url files predate (by many years) MacOS web location files, and MacOS web location files provide *no additional user benefit*. An unfortunate case of NIH syndrome. It would have been trivial to simply change the creator of .url files to launch that internet indirection app that web location files launch. 2. Bad: Text clipping Good: ASCII Text File (what Mac users typically see as SimpleText files) 3. Bad: Styled Text clipping Good: HTML document Clippings in general are an abomination and a copout. I was working at Apple when they were invented as an ill-thought out solution to assist with the Drag Manager. For all intents and purposes all they did was *double* the file format complexity on the entire system, since now any data type could be show up as a normal document file or as a clipping file. This meant that apps which used to support a document data type were "broken" when it came to using the "clipping" version of that data type, and had to be fixed to support it. The canonical example of this is sound - you could of course create sound clippings by dragging them from the Sound control panel, but hey, don't try adding them to your System - it won't work, because the Finder itself was stupid about clippings - which points out the obvious design flaw. As a user - this artificial distinction of clipping vs. document is totally bogus - why is there a difference between a text clipping and a text document? There shouldn't be! They're both just some text. I should be able to open/edit/save/cut/copy/paste/drag&drop either one, so why do we need both? You don't. BBEdit does an *excellent* job of fully supporting all those operations on text documents - that's the way it is supposed to work. BBEdit is proof that there is no need for clippings to have ever existed. Clippings are just an aberrant data format mutation that will likely (hopefully) die out within a few years. Meanwhile, sweep them off your desktop, throw 'em in the trash, and complain to any Macintosh application developers who create them. Demand your portable/standards-based file formats. And if you write Macintosh applications, support all scenarios of open/save/cut/copy/paste/drag&drop of the document formats that you support. Your users will thank you for the simplicity and freedom from clipping clutter. Tantek --