Stendhal Sign Editing Guide: Clear, Copy, Paste, Import, and Export Signs

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Stendhal lets you edit signs directly through its interface and hotkeys, and the sign tools cover clearing text, copying and pasting content, and saving signs to or loading them from disk. Everything here is done from the sign editing screen, so open a sign to edit it and use the buttons described below.

Clearing a Sign

The signClear action removes the text from a sign. Its tooltip describes it as clearing the sign from its text. Use it when you want to wipe a sign's contents instead of retyping over them. Trigger it with the corresponding hotkey (set it in the controls menu) or the on-screen button, depending on how you have the interface laid out.

Copying and Pasting Sign Content

Sign content can be held in memory so you can reuse it elsewhere.

Copy the sign content in memory for this world — stores what is currently on the sign. The tooltip notes the memory is tied to this world.
Paste the sign content in memory for this world — writes the stored sign content back onto a sign.

Because the memory is per-world, a sign you copied in one world is not the same stored content as in another. Copy a sign, then paste it onto another sign in the same world to duplicate it.

Exporting a Sign to Disk

The Export a sign on the disk action saves a sign as a file. This is how you keep a sign permanently outside the game, separate from the in-memory copy. Saved signs are kept in the folder shown by the Saved Signs folder: setting, so you can find and manage the files there.

Importing a Sign from Disk

The Import a sign from the disk action brings a previously saved sign back in. After importing, Stendhal confirms the result with a Sign Loaded from Disk message and the subtitle Your Sign has been loaded! The confirmation text then instructs you to Please edit the sign again and use 'Paste Sign' button. In other words, loading a sign from disk does not place it on the sign for you — you must reopen the sign for editing and apply the paste action to put the loaded content onto it.

Sign editing shares its interface with book editing, and several book actions appear alongside the sign ones. These are useful to know if you work with both:

Import a book from the disk and Export a book on the disk move book content to and from files. Saved books live in the folder named by Saved Books folder:.
Remove and clear all the book pages wipes a book's pages.
Copy the pages in memory for this world and Paste the pages in memory in the book store and restore book pages, again scoped to the current world.
Remove everything on the page clears a single page.
Copy the content and style of the page in memory and Paste the content and style of the page from memory move a page's text along with its formatting.
Create a blank page after this one inserts a new empty page.
Remove this page from the book, shifting the others accordingly deletes a page and closes the gap.
Paste the content of your clipboard at the caret position inserts clipboard text where the cursor sits.
Reset the style after the caret position ($r) clears formatting from that point onward.
Remove all the style and only keep the text strips formatting while preserving the words.
Switch between colors and unicodes list toggles the character picker between the two lists.

Saving Errors to Expect

When saving a book by name, two checks apply. Please enter a title of atleast 3 characters. appears if the name is too short, and A book with the same name has already been saved before. appears if that name is already taken. Choose a longer, unused name and try again.

Quick Reference

Clear a sign: signClear.
Copy a sign: copy the sign content in memory for this world.
Paste a sign: paste the sign content in memory for this world.
Save a sign: export a sign on the disk.
Load a sign: import a sign from the disk, then edit the sign again and use the paste action.
Find saved files: the Saved Signs folder: and Saved Books folder: settings.