Keynote Manager can't read keynotes that were modified using python

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1

I’m having a peculiar issue, and I’m wondering how to fix the mess i’ve made with my keynote file

I was attempting to alter my keynote file using a short python script, but the lines that I altered are not being read by Keynote Manager. When opening the file in the manager, I can see the divisions (unaltered by my script) but none of the keynotes.

Basically, I was attempting to append the text values of the keynotes with the key value (e.g. “{key value}; {text description}”) by splitting each line containing a keynote by its tabs and reformatting it using the following:

formatted_line = f"{key}\t{key}; {txt}\t{pkey}\n"

Opening the file in notepad I don’t see anything wrong with the new keynotes, but when viewing the altered file in notepad++ I see previously absent zero-width characters (e.g. “ZWSBSP”) in place of my ‘\n’ characters that I suspect are causing my problem, but I’m not sure where I went wrong in my script. I am explicitly opening and writing to the files using encoding=‘utf-16’. It’s possible that my problem is caused by the environment i’m running the script in (I am using the “RevitPythonShell” plugin from architecture-building-systems on github, it might be utilizing an older version of Unicode, I think I saw mention of some zero-width characters depreciated) Here’s the script i’m attempting to use that’s causing the problem:

import shutil
import os

print('Begin script.....')

file = "<path_to_keynote_file"
backup = "<path_to_backup_file"

# Check if the original file exists
if not os.path.exists(file):
    print(f"Error: The file '{file}' does not exist.")
else:
    # Try to create a backup
    try:
        shutil.copyfile(file, backup)
        print(f"Backup successfully created at '{backup}'.")
    except Exception as e:
        print(f"An error occurred while creating the backup: {e}")
	
def append_key(line):
	#Skip lines that begin with '#' or 'DIVISION'
	if line.startswith('#') or line.startswith('DIVISION'):
		return line
	
	#Split lines by tabs
	parts = line.split('\t')
	
	#Ensure we have exactly 3 parts
	if len(parts) !=3:
		return None
		print('Something went wrong with splitting the line')
	
	#extract components
	key = parts[0].strip()
	txt = parts[1].strip()
	pkey = parts[2].strip()
	
	#Format the new line
	formatted_line = f"{key}\t{key}; {txt}\t{pkey}\n"
	return formatted_line

with open(backup, "r", encoding="utf-16") as infile, open(file, 'w', encoding="utf-16") as outfile:
	for line in infile:
		processed_line = append_key(line)
		if processed_line:
			outfile.write(processed_line)
print('Completed!')

Any help would be appreciated!

2

I’ve resolved this issue: it appears this is a classic case of dependency hell. I’m assuming revitpythonshell uses an older version of Unicode and is inserting outdated special character codes that are incompatible with the encoding in Keynote Manager.

I shouldn’t have been using both the revit shell and pyrevit anyway. Lesson learned!

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