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Getting Started

TextSoap 7 requires Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later

Overview

TextSoap removes extraneous characters, word wraps broken paragraphs, and so forth. There are more than 100 built-in cleaners available, or you can create your own custom solutions.

TextSoap cleaners automates the processing of text like finding and replacing items, removing unwanted text. It also processes text based on its style. Use it with email, websites, and a whole variety of other text you come across.

Basic Concepts Behind TextSoap

TextSoap uses a slightly different terminology for text processing

Cleaners

A cleaner is one or more steps, or actions, that can be applied to text to transform it. There are two types of cleaners, built-in and custom. Built-in cleaners are pre-defined actions provided with the application (currently, more than 100) that can be applied to text. Custom cleaners allow for user-defined actions to apply to the text.

Actions

Actions are the building blocks of cleaners. An action represents an individual step taken to transform the provided text. Some action examples: find and replace text, rewrap text, apply an existing cleaner, and run an Automator workflow. These are often referred to as "text filters" in other applications.

Groups

A group is a collection of cleaners. Groups can be used to organize cleaners to provide easy access to specific cleaners for a particular task by the user. There are also two types of Groups, built-in and custom. Built-in groups help organize the vast collection of cleaners more logically for tasks such as typography, HTML editing or Email. Custom groups allow the user to define which cleaners are available for their particular needs.

Putting It All Together

Actions are at the core of TextSoap. One or more actions are combined into a Cleaner to provide single-click access to these action(s). Cleaners can then organized into Groups for best use in specific tasks.

Clipboard Workspace

When you open TextSoap, the Clipboard Text window appears. TextSoap pastes in the contents of the Clipboard into the workspace. Now you can apply any cleaners to the text, or edit the text as needed. When you quit TextSoap, it copies the contents of the Clipboard Text window back to the Clipboard.

Text Editing

TextSoap uses the standard Mac OS X text editing environment to provide you with a full featured text editor that can handle both plain text and rich text. If you know how to use TextEdit, Apple's default text editor application, you know the fundamentals of using the TextSoap editor.

Additionally, TextSoap shows you invisible characters in to help you find lurking spaces, tabs, end-of-line markers, and other non-visible characters in your text.

Simple Text Cleaning Example

Using TextSoap in a few basic steps:

1. Open TextSoap application (contents of Clipboard is automatically pasted into Clipboard Text window).
2. Optionally select text to process (if no selection, then entire text will be processed).
3. Click the "Convert to Uppercase" cleaner button in drawer,
4. Quit TextSoap (copies the text from Clipboard Text window to the Clipboard).