A programming utility for programmers who do lots of code porting across platforms.
History
You would think by now that everyone could agree on something as basic as text files. At the very least, a development system should be able to handle both automatically. Oh well, perhaps in heaven I won’t have to put up unwanted control characters in my source code when I move it across platforms.
This DA is a result of my experience with a wonderful utility called DOS Mounter from Dyna. No more Apple File Exchange--just flip your DOS-formatted disk in your Mac SuperDrive and it works just like a Mac disk. Great--except that there’s no provision for translating text files! Perhaps there’s a cleaner way to do it, but I didn’t want to spend 2 weeks trying to find it when I could write this DA much quicker.
Instructions
TextTranslator translates files from Mac to DOS format and vice versa. You get an Open File dialog box where you can choose a file. Choose the output format and click Open. TextTranslator converts the file to the given format and comes back for more. It doesn’t care what format the file was originally in, either.
If you’re like me, you hate redundant steps and have much better things to do with your time than watch your computer convert text files. Therefore, TextTranslator does its thing with minimum effort on your part, and does it pretty darn quick too.
Several subtleties to be aware of, though.
TextTranslator does NOT create new files for the converted text. It translates the file ‘in place’ and writes the output to the same file. Therefore, Be sure and copy the source files that you wish to translate if you want to keep a copy for the original platform.
The button under Convert Folder... corresponds to the current folder. If you click that button, TextTranslator translates all files in the current folder as well as sub-folders. Do Text Files Only makes TextTranslator check to make sure it only converts text files (that is, files with the file type TEXT), in case you have some other files around that you don’t want touched.
Maintain Modification Dates causes TextTranslator to translate files without changing the modification date.
As I said before, this is a particularly handy DA when used in conjunction with Dyna’s DOS Mounter.
I hope this utility makes someone else’s life a little easier. If it does please send the requested funds as detailed below. Comments and suggestions welcome.
Tim
Change History:
1.1 First out-of-house release
1.2 Fixed a bug that caused folders to be read incorrectly on disks mounted with DOS Mounter, causing file not found errors.
Shareware: $10.00
You may give TextTranslator to anyone and everyone you know, as long as this documentation accompanies it. You may NOT sell TextTranslator alone or as part of any package without my express written permission.
