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The Problem With Formats As a webmaster and writer I get drowned in e-mail and all kinds of text documents. Some emails I receive are HTML, some are plain text. Some text comes from who knows where. I cut and paste portions of text from articles, e-mails and between programs all the time. What you quickly see is that not all text is created is equal. This can cause a lot of problems when cutting and pasting, translating and working between documents and programs. Try using the smart quotes from MS Word in an HTML document and you quickly see the problem as soon as you post it on the web. It happens all the time: You open a text file and see strange characters running along the left hand side, square boxes and very weird ligatures. You get filenames with "%20" in them. What's that all about you wonder? (It's how a Windows machine maps a space by the way.) There are line feeds, ASCII characters, MIME codes, soft and hard carriage returns, and quote characters that you want to get rid of. Text must also be formatted for print or web publishing. Moreover, my wife works on PC's all day, and when she e-mails something to herself many times it needs to be cleaned up. But do it by hand? Are you kidding me? We call text with unwanted characters and formatting "dirty," and TextSpresso by Taylor Design is designed to clean up this mess. It does a very fine job. In fact, if I were to choose a theme for this review, it would be - - customizability. Read on...
An Aside I received my review copy several months ago. Since then, the people at Taylor Design have updated it twice. These are incremental updates, but they do take care of nasty little annoyances and cosmetic issues. Over the months I have found myself using it almost everyday, several times a day, as I work with text from all kinds of sources. If you work with text all day, and maybe even if you don't, this is the program for you. In this review I cannot possibly mention all the capabilities of the product, but I will focus on some of the more interesting aspects which make using it on a daily basis a joy, and which have grabbed my heart and made this a must have program for my needs. If you share those needs, it is a must have program for you too.
Filter Me This; Filter Me That
At its core TextSpresso has seven basic kinds of filters which all other filters build upon. It is permutations of these types of filters which gives TextSpresso its power. They are:
How You'll Use It First, there are several situations in which a text cleaning utility will come in useful:
Consider situation one. You get an email from someone and the copy includes text that you need. But the message also includes a lot you don't need, such as quote characters and other e-mail formatting. If it was received in HTML there is even more junk in it. How do you clean it up in TextSpresso?
You end up with clean text ready for print or pasting into another document. And of course, you simply group all of these filters in a MultiFilter set, name it and save it, and the next time you can do all this in one step. Pretty cool, eh? Consider scenario two now. You get some text in a .txt file and it has to go to the web. Problem is that it has smart quotes, no HTML tags, and you wonder how you'll make the deadline. Wonder no more. TextSpresso can add the basics of what is needed to the text so that it an be safely copied and pasted into Dreamweaver or your favorite HTML editor, and you can begin the work of formatting it completely for web publishing. Understand: TextSpresso is not an HTML editor, and spaces within text make it difficult to convert raw text into complete HTML using filters and mappings. If you have italicized text it won't code it for you. But it can add <P> tags and clean the text up sufficiently to make your life much easier. Once you run some text through TextSpresso it can easily be pasted into an HTML document with half of your work done for you already. Some of the included "Internet" filters include "HTML Bullet List To Text," "HTML Table to Text," and "Text to HTML." The "Internet" filters include the very useful "Net to Text" (which is actually a multi-filter), "Text to Net" filters, "Dumb Quotes" and "Strip ASCII > 127" for getting rid of high ASCII characters. This saves you a great deal of time.
Finishing Up So now that you have cleaned your text you want to save it. TextSpresso makes this easily by allowing you to change document types. It comes with a dozen or so formats you can "Save as" right from the main window. Adding a type/creator code is as easy as going to the Applications Preferences window, selecting "Types" and just adding a type by simply pressing "Add File" and selecting a file. The type is added to the main window's type drop down menu. It comes able to save as BBEdit, Netscape, WriteNow and others. Moreover, you can open most any file with it by selecting "Open" while holding down "Command-Option."
Wild Times Ahead These filters, the Internet ones especially, can get wild at times and yield unexpected results. The key to this program is experimentation and more experimentation. You may not, for example, be applying the wrong filters but you may be applying them in the wrong order. So try a different order. With 160 prepackaged filters and thousands of permutations, this is a program you have to work with to get used to. You have to go through some trial and error to really see how this program works. You will not, in all likelihood, see its power or realize its feature set until you have worked with it for a while (as with most feature rich programs). As with Photoshop filters, wherein you just start applying them to see what effects you can get, so too with TextSpresso filters - - you just have to get your hands on it and start applying filters. Work long enough and you'll find the right order and combination. You'll be very surprised, maybe sometimes dumbfounded, but always grateful for what this program can do. But that's part of the fun (if you think this kind of stuff is fun). One thing I would be amiss to leave out TextSpresso's "Hot Filter" Option. You can, in Preferences, set a particular filter to be run whenever you open the program, or whenever you select a key combination of your choosing. Again, this shows the thought that went into this program and is another example of Taylor Design's commitment to a user's customization of the program. It's also an intelligent and capable text editor, but not a word processor. TextSpresso's text editing features include:
It's not BBEdit, but it can handle text in all kinds of ways. You can open the window, start typing, and covert to PC text or create an HTML document from what you have written, all with the simple point and click feel of the Mac. And make no mistake - - this program is Mac Savvy, for it uses standard Mac interfaces and options which you have come to expect. It even gets fun. You can, for example, go in and customize the cursor in several ways. You can customize the appearance of the windows from 3-D to non-3-D, and select sound effects as well. The interface is smooth and clean overall. I point this out because a program shares the personality of its developer. The developers here believe in extensibility and customizability from the program's guts to it interface options. And isn't this the Mac spirit of freedom and creativity?
Keep 'em Coming I mentioned that since I received my copy Taylor Design has upgraded two times. The guys at Taylor Design are committed to this program, and they are committed to improving and expanding it. I say this because this is a shareware application and one never knows how long one will be developed. As far as I know, Taylor Design is committed to TextSpresso post-OS X as well. This is a shareware program which has a life and future, so don't worry about what may happen to it once you've invested in it.
Final Thoughts TextSpresso is shareware, as I've already mentioned, and is available as a 30 day demo here. The only manual you will get is in HTML form (Netscape and IE), but it is large and reasonably well-written. (Contra some HTML manuals which amount to not-much-at-all-help.) It is comprehensive as far as the functions of the program. But it tends to shy away from some of the theory behind text and text types, which is shame. Many people won't be able to use this without knowing some of the particulars of how texts works, the kinds there are, and the issues involved. At times they explain this well, but effort has been made to make the manual clear and simple which is both, in my opinion, good and bad. I think they made the assumption that one who buys this program knows all the technicalities anyway and so they did not focus on them. This seems like a justified assumption but some might find more background helpful. But this does not take away from this great program. I have used it for three months now (and I have used other incarnations of it), and I can say this: It has never crashed once. It has proven stable on a G3, a new G4, and a PowerBook (FireWire). So if you work with text from different sources, this program is for you. If you work in print publication, web publication, different programs and different machines, you need this program. I have found it a time-saver with a friendly interface and customizable feature set. TextSpresso has earned our highest rating of 5 Smileys. Be sure to pay your shareware fees on this one - - it's worth it.
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TextSpresso
is a filtering application: Text filters lie at its core. Filters simply
strip, change, re-map, and convert text characters and strings of text
characters. It's more than a super "search and replace" application though.
You can filter whole documents or sections of documents. You can undo
every filter from the "History Palette." I have seen the numbers of filters
go from 90 to over 160 in this program. And they are all (except for one)
multithreaded. This means that you can perform other tasks, including
filtering other documents while a filter is running. You can also pause,
resume, and stop a running filter. And something that is a big plus in
my book is that you can customize TextSpresso filters. You can take several
filters and create customizable "multi-filters" which do several specific
tasks at once for a particular job you have. TextSpresso is also AppleScriptable.
And yes, with a little work (not much really), if TextSpresso doesn't
have a filter you want, you can create one yourself. Once you do, you
can export it for others to use; and of course you can import other's
filters as well. In other words, when you add all this together, it means
TextSpresso is a program that grows with you and lets you work the way
you have to work. It seems limitless in potential. It's so un-Microsoft.
