text utility by maclab

user guide

introduction

Why User Text Cleaner?

Text Cleaner is the tool used by graphic designers, editors and web designers to reduce text cleanup time to seconds. Em and en dashes, smart quotes and ligatures are set or removed, unwanted spaces, tabs, returns are eliminated, and much more, making search-and-replace prep work a thing of the past. And unlike search-and-replace, there's no need to perform tasks several times over. Click once, and all cleaning functions are performed simultaneously and in the best possible sequence.

No other text preparation tool functions in such a unique, easy-to-use and intelligent manner. This all happens under the hood because Text Cleaner was meant for you to set it and forget it, although there's plenty to offer power users as well.

Particularly unique is the ability to work directly with QuarkXPress and InDesign, which adds the benefit of retaining all style information after cleaning the text.

Requirements
Text Cleaner 3 requires a Macintosh computer running Mac OS X 10.2 or higher. QuarkXPress 6 or higher is required to clean QuarkXPress documents, InDesign 3.0 (CS) or higher is required to clean InDesign documents.

The Interface
The interface is clean and easy to understand. Each check box lists a cleaning option and the “Change” and “To” fields allow custom cleaning operations to be entered. A pop-up menu allows selecting presets, and the buttons next to it create and delete presets. Clicking the button next to the “Change” field expands the window to reveal nine additional sets of fields to further customize cleaning operations. The “Clean!” brush cleans the text after selections have been made.


Below are short descriptions of each text type that can be cleaned by choosing the corresponding option.

Copied Text (Clipboard)
Text copied with the “Copy” command available in nearly all applications. The cleaned text can then be pasted back in to the application, or into a different application.

Text File (Plain Text)
A Text file that resides locally on your computer or network.

InDesign Text Selection
The current text selection in the frontmost InDesign document.

XPress Text Selection
The current text selection in the frontmost QuarkXPress document.

What is Panorama?
Panorama is the database engine used to create and run Text Cleaner. To find out more about Panorama, visit ProVUE Development at www.provue.com.


cleaning

Cleaning text is simple. Select cleaning options with the check boxes and pop-up menus, and enter any additional criteria in the “Change” (original text) and “To” (desired text) fields. (For more information, see “Custom Cleaning Operations.”)

After options have been selected, use one of the methods described below.

Copied Text

  1. Highlight the text within any application document that allows copy and paste .
  2. Select “Copy” from the Edit menu.
  3. Activate Text Cleaner by clicking its window or launching it.
  4. Select the “Copied Text (Clipboard)” button, then click the “Clean!” brush.
  5. Go back to the original document, which should still have the text selected.
  6. Select “Paste” to replace the old text with the new, clean text.

Note: The cleaned text can be pasted into any application document that supports copy and paste.

Text Files

  1. Select the “Text File (Plain Text)” button, then click the “Clean!” brush.
  2. From the dialog box, select the plain text (ASCII) file to clean.
  3. After a moment, the “Save As...” dialog box will appear. Save the new, cleaned file.
  4. Import the new, clean file into a layout or open it directly into a word processor.

Note: the text file must be a plain text file. Most word processors offer the option to save as plain text, although you will not retain any style information (bold, italic, etc).

Drag and Drop

  1. In the Finder, select the plain text file(s) that need to be cleaned.
  2. Drag these files over the DropClean icon, and when it darkens, release the mouse.
  3. DropClean will launch Text Cleaner, which will clean the file(s) using the last options set.
  4. The cleaned text file will be saved next to the original and with the same name, but with the word “(Clean)” added to the end.

(See “Customizing DropClean” in the “Customizing” section for more drag and drop options.)

QuarkXPress Text

  1. Save the QuarkXPress document (in order to revert to the pre-cleaned state if necessary.)
  2. In QuarkXPress, select the text to be cleaned.
  3. Go to the Text Cleaner window, click “XPress Text Selection” then “Clean!”
  4. Text Cleaner replaces the selected text with cleaned text.

Note: Text Cleaner 3 requires QuarkXPress version 6 or higher to clean XPress documents.

Note: Text Cleaner is case sensitive in all situations except when locating the text to clean within a QuarkXPress document. This is how it might affect your XPress cleaning:

The text in the “Change” field, will be located regardless of case while the case of the text in the “To” field, will be replaced exactly as you entered it.

When using the ligatures option, capitalized words that contain “fi” and “fl” will be converted to lowercase fi and fl ligatures.

InDesign Text

  1. Save the InDesign document (in order to revert to the pre-cleaned state if necessary.)
  2. In InDesign, select the text to be cleaned.
  3. Go to the Text Cleaner window, click “InDesign Text Selection” then “Clean!”
  4. Text Cleaner replaces the selected text with cleaned text.

Note: Text Cleaner 3 requires InDesign 3 (CS) or higher to clean InDesign documents.

Email Messages
Text from email messages often has a return after every line. Text Cleaner can convert this text back to “wrapped” text. In the Text Cleaner window, check the option “Line breaks to wrapped text.” A caution message will appear. This option should only be used if the text to be cleaned has an extra return after every line.

To remove email quotes, which are designated by the greater-than symbol, check the option “Remove email quote symbols (>).” A dialog box will appear asking whether to replace apparent email quote symbols or all greater-than symbols. Replacing all greater-than symbols is more thorough, but could result in altering math formulas or URL indicators such as <www.textcleaner.com>.

PC Line Feeds
PC text files use line feeds at the beginning of each line of text that look like little rectangles on the Mac. The setting “Remove PC line feeds” will delete these unnecessary characters. If line feeds are present, then there are probably also returns after each line, which can be removed by checking “Line breaks to wrapped text.” (See “Email Messages.”)

Single or Double Return?
When removing multiple returns from a document, users must choose between two result options: a double or single return. If document style sheets will be used the way they’re intended, with formatting for space after and/or space before each paragraph, then select “Multiple returns to single return.” If returns between each paragraph are preferred, to create the space separating the paragraphs, select “Multiple returns to double return.” Double returns are more prevalent in word processing, email and other non-graphic design applications. Web masters might want to use single returns since two returns in a row are not recognized in HTML.

Changing Case
Uppercase, lowercase, title caps and sentence caps can all be changed. One limitation: title caps and sentence caps cannot be cleaned directly within a QuarkXPress document. However, the text can be copied, cleaned and then pasted back into the document.

Removing HTML
Text Cleaner can strip HTML tags from copied text or a text file, removing all tags such as <body></body> and leaving the text that was inbetween. Text Cleaner does not strip HTML tags directly from within QuarkXpress or InDesign, but the text can be copied, cleaned, then pasted back into either application.



customizing

Presets
Preset configurations can be saved and recalled later with a menu selection. A few helpful presets have been set for you. Select a preset from the pop-up menu to see how Text Cleaner recalls different settings. Think of a preset as a configuration snapshot, allowing a quick change of multiple settings corresponding to different jobs or situations. A preset remembers all the cleaning options that were set at the time it was created, including the contents of the “Change” and “To” fields.Creating a preset is as easy as selecting the options desired, then clicking the “Save as New Preset...” button. To make changes to an existing preset, select it, make the settings change then click “Save as New Preset...” Give it the same name and it will overwrite the previous preset after confirmation.

To delete a preset, click the “Delete Preset...” button. The current preset will be deleted and the preset menu will display “Undefined.”

Exporting and Importing Presets
Presets can be imported and exported to and from Text Cleaner. This is an excellent way to be sure everyone on staff has the same group of presets without having to hand configure all the options on each computer.

To export presets, select “Export Presets...” from the file menu. The standard save dialog box appears. Choose a location and file name.

To import presets, select “Import Presets...” from the file menu. Navigate to the location of the preset file, then select it. Be sure the file selected is a Text Cleaner preset file! Importing presets does not replace existing presets, but adds to them. Any preset names that already exist are not imported. To replace instead of adding to existing presets, select “Delete All Presets...” from the file menu before the import process.

Customizing DropClean
DropClean can be customized for use with Text Cleaner presets. Go to the Text Cleaner Folder and locate the DropClean application. Select it, then select “Duplicate” from the file menu. Rename the new “DropClean copy” application to match any Text Cleaner preset name (including presets you create). Important: the name must match exactly! Now this new droplet will utilize the preset by the same name. Drop a text file on it just like the standard DropClean application. For convenience, an alias of the new droplet can be created and moved to the desktop.

Custom Cleaning Operations
Text Cleaner’s built-in options are comprehensive, but there might be other text characters in need of cleaning from a document. Enter the text character(s) to change in the “Change” field and the desired result in the “To” field. For example, in order to change all tabs to four spaces, enter a tab in the “Change” field by selecting “tab” from the pop-up menu. In the “To” field, type in four spaces. To eliminate a text character altogether, type it in the “Change” field and leave the “To” field empty. The small pop-up menus next to the fields allow the selection of invisible characters such as returns and tabs as well as some commonly used special characters. Multiple custom cleaning operations can be entered by clicking the button next to the word “Change.” The window expands and allows up to nine additional custom cleaning operations.

 

Sounds
The scrubbing sounds give a audible sign that Text Cleaner is still at work, but can be disabled by selecting “Scrubbing Sounds” from the Clean menu to toggle them off and on. Text Cleaner will clean faster without the scrubbing, but it’s not as fun. The guitar twang that sounds when cleaning is complete can also be toggled on and off by selecting “Completion Twang” from the Clean menu.

Warnings
When enabling some conversion options, warnings will appear to inform of ramifications that could affect the text, depending on its contents. If you would rather not see these dialog boxes, select “Warnings” from the Clean menu to toggle the warnings off and on. Note that disabling warnings will also disable the dialog box that allows selection of the email quote removal method used. (See “Email Messages” in the “Cleaning” section.)



considerations

File Formats and Styles
Text files to be cleaned must be plain text (ASCII) files. Almost all word processor and layout applications have the ability to save text in this format. Saving documents as plain ASCII text removes styles such as bold, italic, style sheets, etc., but usually new styling is applied anyway after inserting the text into a layout. Using copy and paste to clean text will usually remove styling.

QuarkXPress or InDesign text can be cleaned directly within the document to retain all style information. (See “QuarkXPress Text ” and “InDesign Text” in the “Cleaning” section for more details.)

Limitations of Copy and Paste
The “Clean Clipboard” conversion works with as much text as the system can handle copying. Some applications however, limit the text transferred to the clipboard via copy and paste. For example, QuarkXPress limits the clipboard to 32k. When using the “Clean Clipboard” command with applications having these limitations, the text will appear to end prematurely when pasted back in. The good news is that 32k is quite a bit of text—usually several pages.

Cleaning Conflicts
A few cleaning options might not make sense to use at the same time, particularly when removing traditional typesetting marks for Web or email use. Here are some combinations to watch out for.

If “En dash to space hyphen space” is selected:

If “Curly quote to straight quote” is selected:



help

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Why is there no “Save” command?
A: Text Cleaner saves changes automatically.

Q: Are the custom cleaning operations case sensitive?
A: They’re case sensitive when cleaning the clipboard or text file, but not when cleaning a QuarkXPress document, due to a QuarkXPress limitation.

Q: What is the best way to convert word processing files to plain text files?
A: There are at least four ways to handle this.

Q: Text Cleaner is fast, but is there a way to make it faster?
A: Turning off the sounds will turbo-charge Text Cleaner, but you won’t have as much fun. (see “Sounds” in the “Customizing” section). When using Text Cleaner with QuarkXPress and InDesign, the cleaning speed is also limited by those applications.

Q: Why do my measurement marks turn to smart quotes when I clean an InDesign document using copy and paste, or paste cleaned text into an InDesign document from any other source?
A: As of the writing of this documentation, it appears to be impossible to paste a straight inch or foot mark into InDesign CS from another application. Since the text is being copied to Text Cleaner to be cleaned, it is going to another application then back to InDesign. A better way to handle this is to clean a text file or to clean the selected text within InDesign.



Error Messages

The following are some error messages you might encounter.

File is Not a Text File and Will Not Be Cleaned
DropClean returns this error if you drop a non-text file on it. Convert or save the file as plain text (ASCII) before using DropClean.

The clipboard is empty. You have to copy something!
Text was not copied before attempting to clean copied text.

Duplicate Preset Names were Found and were Not Imported
Each preset name must be unique. If a preset file is imported and contains a preset name that already exists in your current presets, the duplicate will not be loaded.

User Guide
The User Guide can be opened directly by selecting “User’s Guide” from the View menu, “Help” from the Panorama menu, or clicking the question mark at the bottom right corner of the Text Cleaner window.

Technical Support
Technical support can be obtained by the contact information available on www.textcleaner.com or the information within the Text Cleaner software. Check www.textcleaner.com for news and update information. For a quick link to the Text Cleaner Web site, select “Text Cleaner Web Site” from the View menu.



License and Copyright
This software is provided “as is” with no warranty of any kind. Liability is limited to replacement software and in no event will Studio 405, Inc or MacLab. be liable for direct or indirect damages arising from your use or inability to use the software. This software is protected by United States and International Copyright Law. By installing this software you agree to the terms of the license described herein.

License: This license specifies use of the software on a single computer at a single location unless you have purchase a multiuser license agreement. You may not duplicate the software except for backup purposes. You agree to retain the backup and the original in your possession. You may only transfer the software to another party if transferred in its entirety on a permanent basis and you do not retain any copies in your possession. Text Cleaner and DropClean are trademarks of Studio 405, Inc., Panorama is a trademark of the ProVUE Development Corporation, QuarkXPress is a trademark of Quark, Inc. MacLink is a trademark of Dataviz, InDesign is a trademark of Adobe Systems, Inc..

Copyright 1997 - 2005 by MacLab & Studio 405, Inc., all rights reserved.