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What's New in TextSoap 7

General

App is now a 64-bit application.

App uses a new regular expression engine. Please note a syntax change. Replace capture strings are now $0, $1, $2 vs. the older format \0 \1 \2. Any imported cleaners are converted during the import.

New documentation on Regular Expressions is included under the help menu.

You can now apply cleaners to non-contiguous selections.

New Cleaners

Several new cleaners were added to help process text.

- Remove Duplicate Lines (does so without requiring a sort)
- Convert HTML Source to Rich Text
- Normalize Dates to System's Short format
- Normalize Dates to System's Medium format
- Normalize Dates to System's Long format
- Normalize Dates to System's Full format
- Unsort Lines (randomizes lines)

Improved Cleaners

- Convert URLs to Hyperlinks provides better URL matching
- Extra URLs by Replacing/Appending also has better URL matching
- Smarten Quotes now uses the System Text preferences for open and close quote characters.

TextSoap Universal

TextSoap's application specific plug-ins & scripts (like those for BBEdit, Eudora, Coda, Entourage) were replaced with a system-wide menu bar access to TextSoap cleaners.

Once the feature is enabled (in General Preferences), it allows you to place the cursor in virtually any text editing field and clean either the entire contents of the text. Or just apply the cleaner to selected text.

TextSoap Universal also supports a global palette to apply cleaners to text in other applications.

New User Experience

TextSoap 7 adopts a more streamlined appearance.

In text editing windows, the lower left provides a popup that toggles between rich text & plain text. When using plain text, the popup also includes which line-endings to you.

To the right of the text, there are three available panes:

- Cleaners

- You can select the group of cleaners to display.
- Long items will now wrap when necessary.
- You can sort the Library list alphabetically.
- Filtering now combines the separated words with an AND to continually reduce the list size.

- Find and Replace Pane

- Bigger text entry areas for more complex expressions
- New regex options:

- Multi-line searches (?m)
- Dot Matches All (?s)
- Use Unicode Words (?w)
- Allow comments (?x)

- Search History remembers the last 25 searches
- Grep Menu allows you to recall common grep strings.
- Find All - shows list of all Matches

- Regex Lab

Regex Lab is similar to the Find and Replace Pane, but is designed to be more interactive. As you type in your regular expression, the text result is displayed.

The customization windows have been combined into a single window allow you to edit custom cleaners, groups and the MyScrub cleaner within a single window.

Custom Cleaner Editor

- Custom Cleaner list can now be filtered to quickly find a specific cleaner.
- Simpler sorting. Click sort icon to sort cleaners alphabetically. Option-click to sort in reverse alphabetical order.
- Action layous were redesigned to use a minimum amount of space by default. Many actions can also be resized to provide a bigger work area.
- Find and Replace Action is now resizeable.
- Find and Replace also supports a find history & grep list popup menus.
- Bulk Find and Replace action is resizable.

- Column widths are resizeable
- Better keyboard navigation to move within the table
- Supports copying to the clipboard, tab-delimited text
- Supports pasting in (from clipboard) tab-delimited text
- Columns are sortable
- Support for dragging items within a table.

- New Find Text and associate URL action makes it easier to set a hyperlink to various text. For example, you can find "Apple" and associated the link "http://www.apple.com" -- any instances of "Apple" will have a hyperlink added to the text.
- Find and Replace Text using Template allows you to link up to three separate values and associate it with a key value. For example, you might want to use a company name as the key value, the company's URL as Value 1 and a perhaps a flag to indicate whether the link should be opened in a new window. Then you might write out the html: <a href="{value1}" >{key}</a>

- New action to set Underline attributes
- New action to set Strikethrough attributes
- New action to set Super/Subscript attribute

- The more complex set style action is now broken up into smaller pieces

- Set Font action based on Font family, also shows a preview
- Set Text color action
- Adjust font size

- Set background color
- Remove character attribute allows removing a variety of attributes specified within the action.
- Subroutines moved to a popup menu. The popup menu enables selecting a different subroutine, adding, renaming, and removing subroutines.
- Cleaner properties are now provided in a popup window.
- Compound actions (Find Text and Apply Style, Find Style and Apply cleaner, etc) have been replaced by condtionals. There are currently three conditionals: "If Text Matches," "If Font Matches," "If Text Has Attribute". The new "End Conditional" marks the end of a conditional block.

When a conditional block is encountered. TextSoap looks for text that matches the condition specified. If it finds any text, it then applies the list of actions within the block to that text.

The End Conditional marks the end of a block of statements.

- Comments are now handled with a single comment area at the bottom of the action list.
- Simpler way to add an apply custom cleaner action. All cleaners are now also listed in the action source list of the custom cleaner editor. Simply drag a custom cleaner item to create a simple "apply this cleaner" action. If you need to be able to change the cleaner within the action, continue to use the "Apply Cleaner" action.

Batch Cleaning Interface

- Interactive batch cleaning option is now available. Select File > Batch Cleaning to display. Provides same functionality as the Automator action "Clean Text Files."

Changes for TextSoap 6 Users

If you are coming from TextSoap 6, there are a few additional changes to be aware of:

While TextSoap 6 was broken up into the main app and an agent ("textsoapAgent"), TextSoap 7 merges these into a single app. The various integration options will automatically launch TextSoap when asked to clean text. When using AppleScript, you should script the application directly (see AppleScript topic).

The BBEdit, Mailsmaith, TextWrangler, Eudora, and Coda app plugins are no longer part of the app. The latest versions of BBEdit and TextWrangler have already dropped support for app-plugins anyway. The contextual menu plugin is also gone. Use either OS X Services, or the new TextSoap Universal feature to access TextSoap functionality in your apps. TextSoap Universal provides integration support to a much broader set of applications (basically most apps that support standard copy and paste).

Syntax changes in regex find and replace, in particular with replacement strings (now $0, $1 instead of \0, \1).

TextSoap 7 keeps its own preferences and data files and will not interfere with TextSoap 6 preferences or datafiles. However, on first launch, it will import your TextSoap 6 database of cleaners and groups. You should be able to run TextSoap 6 and 7 side-by-side without any issues (TextSoap 7 will automatically shutdown the v6 textsoapAgent when it is launched).