Low End Mac Reader Specials

Memory To Go Special: MacPro 8 Core 8GB kit $232 / 4GB kit $116 / 2GB kit $72. New Macbook 2GB DDR3-$65. HARD DRIVES available -- Free shipping / LIfetime warranty.

Download Typestyler, still the Ultimate Styling Tool for Internet, Print and Video Graphics. Works great in Classic with a Native OS X Version on the way. Free Tryout: www.typestyler.com

LA Computer Company: Specials on AppleCare, iMac's, MacBook Pros and more. Optical Drives for Apple iBooks, Powerbooks, MacBooks, MacBook Pros in Stock. Call 1-800-941-7654 Click Here.

Other World Computing: Big Deals on Big LCDs: 23" 'TrueHD' up to 2048x1152 + USB2 Hub & WebCam $279.99. Specials on 20" to 30" from $167.99. Freight from only $3.95!

Poker Mac Don't install Parallels to play poker online! Poker Mac will show you how to download and install a native Mac poker application such as Full Tilt Poker Mac.

Laptop Hardware Provided by TechRestore - Overnight Mac & iPod Repairs.

Compare products like desktop computers, apple laptops, apple macs, and LCD Monitors side by side! All the information and reviews to make the best purchasing decision for new mobile phones, sat nav systems, or MP3 players. The Ciao online shopping community makes searching products easy for you.

Low End Mac Reviews

TextSoap 4.5: Powerful Text Cleaning Tools

Dan Knight - 2007.08.06

del.icio.us Bookmark in del.icio.us

In my review of Name Munger, I mentioned TextSoap as one of the tools I use to clean up text. And then I realized that although I've been using this gem for years, I hadn't written a review of it.

I've been using TextSoap since at least 2000, running version 2 on my Umax SuperMac S900 clone under Mac OS 9.something. Version 3 added support for Mac OS X, which I started experimenting with in January 2002 and switched to in January 2003.

What Is TextSoap?

TextSoap is a program for cleaning up your text. It can take an email with hard line breaks at the end of each line and turn the text into flowing paragraphs. It can take that text and wrap it to a certain line length or quote it for pasting into a new email. It can make smart quotes dumb - and vice versa.

It can turn non-breaking spaces into regular spaces and replace multiple spaces with a single space. It can capitalize a sentence, turn a selected phrase into all lower case, or capitalize every word you've highlighted. It can convert your text so it's compatible with HTML. It can replace multiple carriage returns with one - or turn one into two.

Best of all, you can create your own filters, so if you want to turn every instance of a double-hypen into a single hyphen surrounded by spaces (as we do at Low End Mac), you can create the tool to do it at the click of a button.

You can even create mySCRUB, a tool that combines all the filters you'd like to apply at once. In our case, it dumbs down quotes, eliminates excess spaces, strips multiple tabs, turns tabs into spaces (there are no tabs in HTML), converts the ellipsis character (…) into three periods (...), changes em-dashes to two hyphens and en-dashes to a single hyphen, an en-space into two spaces, and turns non-breaking spaces into regular ones. Instantly.

If you work with text for a living, a tool like this is invaluable. (It can also do the reverse of most of the things mySCRUB does.)

There are a few Windows characters that I'm still trying to figure out how to clean, but outside of them, TextSoap works flawlessly.

I'm using TextSoap 4.5.2, and Unmarked Software has been asking me to upgrade to version 5 for months now. (The current version is 5.6.) But I'm happy with the tool I'm using and don't yet see how it would benefit me to upgrade.

TextSoap 5

According to Unmarked and reviewers, TextSoap 5 goes way beyond being a cleanup tool for text. It adds features such as tagging text based on its style and converting RTF documents to HTML, which could make my job even easier.

TextSoap works with OS X Services, making its filters available in OS X applications that support services, such as TextWrangler (a powerful, free text editor - and another program I've used for years but not yet reviewed).

TextSoap Standard sells for $29.95, and the Deluxe version costs $39.95. There's also a Windows version for $26.95.

Based on my experience with TextSoap 2.0 through 4.5, I can heartily recommend it to anyone who needs powerful text cleaning tools. It was nearly perfect at 3.5, and knowing Unmarked Software's track record, the latest version only improves upon it. LEM

Manufacturers and distributors: Interested in having your product reviewed? Please read our review policy.

Recent Content on Low End Mac

Latest Deals on Low End Mac

About LEM | Support | Usage | Privacy | Contacts

Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2009 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Advice presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
  LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
  Access our RSS news feed at http://lowendmac.com/feed.xml.
  Email may be published at our discretion; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. If you prefer your message not be published, mark it "not for publication." Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
  PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.
  Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iBook, iMac, eMac, iPod, iPhone, PowerBook, MacBook, MagSafe, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.


Navigation

Used Mac Dealers
Apple History
Video Cards
Email Lists

Favorite Sites

MacSurfer
MacMinute
MacInTouch
MyAppleMenu
InfoMac
Macs Only!
The Mac Observer
Accelerate Your Mac
RetroMacCast
PB Central
MacWindows
The Vintage Mac
   Museum
DealMac
DealsOnTheWeb
Mac2Sell
ramseeker
Mac Driver Museum
JAG's House
System 6 Heaven
System 7 Today
the pickle's Low-End
   Mac FAQ
Abandonware
   Petition
Mac vs. PC Info

Affiliates

The Apple Store
Mac Connection
MacMall
TechRestore
ExperCom
Crucial Memory
batteries.com

Have a question?
Ask an expert!

Advertise

All of our advertising is handled by BackBeat Media. For price quotes and advertising information, please contact at BackBeat Media (646-546-5194). This number is for advertising only.

Open Link

Problems viewing this page with Internet Explorer 5.5 or 6? It works fine in other browsers, including IE 7. We recommend Firefox for those using Windows, as it is standards based and more secure than IE 6 (and earlier). More LEM visitors use Firefox than any other browser.