Glossary of Terms

Actions

Actions are the building blocks in TextSoap. 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 sometimes called “text filters” in other applications. The relationship between cleaners and actions is very tight. Cleaners contain actions. Cleaners can also used as actions (see Apply action).

Cleaners

A cleaner is one or more actions applied to text. 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.

Clipboard Workspace

When you open TextSoap, the Clipboard Workspace window appears. TextSoap pastes in the contents of the clipboard into this 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 Workspace window back to the clipboard.

Groups

A group is a collection of cleaners. Use groups to organize cleaners for particular tasks. There are two types of Groups, built-in and custom. Built-in groups help organize the vast collection of cleaners based on common functionality such as typography, HTML-related or Email-related. Custom groups allow you to define which cleaners are collected together and in what order.

Text Editing

TextSoap uses the standard macOS 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 app, you know the fundamentals of 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. TextSoap also provides line numbering and word count functionality for your text.