TextFilter offers a variety of ways to shapen up your text documents. With TextFilter, you can delete unnecessary returns, spaces, control characters, and lines.
When you open a file, the TextFilter window shows only the first 20,000 characters. This limits your vierw, but it speeds up everything. The upper half window shows the original (non-edited) version, the lower half shows the edited (or filtered) version. Yes, two lines between these screens is the precious TextFilter!
Let’s skip File, Edit, and Font menus, they are not different from those in other applications anyway. Let's look directly into the Options menu.
Filter preferences
Original format
1) Good ol’ Mac format: Select this option if you don’t want to remove returns.
2) Block format: A very common format. Two returns seperate two paragraphs.
3) First line indent: A space (or more) at the start of line indicates the start of a new paragraph.
4) Hanging indent: A space (or more) at the start of line indicates that the line and the line before it belong to the same paragraph.
[Minimum spaces for indent]: You can specify the minimum number of spaces for an indicator of indent. For example, in the case of a first-line indent text like below, you may want to use six as the “minimum spaces for indent.”
5) Deduce: If there’s no formatting clue, this option is the last resort. Press the “Original line width” button. TextFilter will calculate the line width of original document. Then, with “deduce” option on, TextFilter compares the calculated length of blanks at the right end of the line versus the length of the first word of the next line. If the word is longer than the blanks, TextFilter considers that both lines belong to the same paragraph (i.e. the first word in the second line is forced out from the first line because it was too long!) If the word is shorter than the blanks, TextFilter thinks that the return is a real “intentional” one and starts a new paragraph there.
6) You can prevent from deleting returns if the last sentense ends with a period or an exclamation mark.
Multiple Returns
You can delete repeptive returns. Notice that the “one extra return” option won’t add an extra return. It changes multiple (more than two) returns into two returns.
Delete control-J
TextFilter deletes control-J characters on the fly.
Spaces at line start
With this option on, you can delete multiple spaces at the start of line. With this option off, spaces at the line start are treated exactly like multiple spaces in the middle of line.
Multiple spaces
You can also delete multiple spaces in the middle of line.
1) You can retain all of them.
2) You can change them into a single space.
3) You can change them into a single tab.
4) TextFilter can count the number of words in the line, and if the number is smaller than or equal to the number in the box (say, just 5 words in a 80 character per line text), TextFilter turns multiple spaces into a tab, otherwise into a space.
5) If the number of consectutive spaces is more than or equal to the number in the box, TextFilter turns them into a tab, otherwise into a single space.
Remove lines
You can delete lines that start with or contain key phrases. If you’re going to delete spaces at the start of line, don't include initial spaces in the key phrases. Search can be either case sensitive or not.
General preferences
Here you can specify default text font name, font size, “show invisibles”, and file creator settings. The settings in the “default font” won’t affect current settings until next time you use TextFilter. To change current font, font size, and “show invisible” parameters, use the Edit menu. You can also specify the file creator here. The file creator is a four-letter signature specific to each application. For example, the file creator of ‘ttxt’ is for Teach Text and ‘MSWD’ is for Microsoft Word. You can either retain the original creator or change it to whatever you like. Any change in the creator setting is immediately effective. You can also change the creator tentatively by typing it in the small window next to the horizontal scroll bar. Bring the pointer there, the arrow will change to the I-beam cursor and you can type the creator in there.
Supports Drag and Drop interface under system 7
TextFilter now supports the drag and drop interface under system 7. Drag any ‘TEXT’ file and drop it onto the TextFilter icon under system 7. TextFilter will automatically open it.
