Stationery (templates) behaviour question

Question

As a Licensed Old Crank, I've done what I can to get rid of Starting Points, and never have gone into Templates. Recently I created a blank, landscape oriented 11x17 document in Draw and saved it where I wanted, as Stationery (.cws) for on-going use ignoring the Templates default.
When I open the document w/ a double click, a window in my format pops open called "Untitled" just as expected. But unexpectedly, my Stationery document makes a copy of itself called "<name> copy.cws", or copy1, 2 etc. if there's already such a document. Each one behaves as Stationery, but none 'is' the item I'm working with, just waiting for a new name, or to swap its .cws for a .cwk on saving. Of course using a tedious Open… dialogue in AW (and having to select the document type AWTemplates, which are apparently not AW Documents) works perfectly.
It's only for my amusement that I ask; is there an accepted theory about the purpose intended by such bizarre non-standard behaviour? Has it ever been reported elswhere in the Applverse? Or does it join List View in Tiger's Finder that unaccountably has no Cut in its Edit menu in the Hall of Apple Oddities?
Message was edited by: Ed Hanna
Message was edited by: Ed Hanna

Answer 1

AppleWorks template files are intended to be opened from Starting Points (they contain information that AW uses to organize your template files). It doesn't hurt anything, but is just a matter of self-preservation. AppleWorks has indexed those template files so you can find them easily from within AppleWorks. If your Mac has multiple user accounts, it keeps each user's templates separate from the others, while allowing all users access to the common templates. When you try to open them from the Finder, AW immediately makes a copy of it to make it harder for you to make an inadvertent change to the original indexed version.
If you want to be able to double-click a template, you can use my solution to delete the original template after a "copy" was created, then remove "(space)copy" from the name of the copy created. I found that this copy (now named as the original template) will not create copies.