Email stripping, or cleaning, program
I have a utility program on my Windows PC called EmailStripper, which strips the greater than signs from forwarded emails and cleans them up so I can reforward them in a more readable, and pleasant, format. I've been looking for a Mac equivalent for some time and think I've finally found it in "TextSpresso 3." So I thought I would share 
.
It will take something like this:
>> Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this contin=
>> ent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the
>> proposition that all men are created equal.
and make it look like this:
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
It does a lot more, but my personal focus was for use with email messages. If, like me, you're interested in a utility like this, you can give it a look see here: TextSpresso 3
It comes with a 30 day trial and, in my opinion, registration is reasonable 8). Then again, you may know of a 'free' utility, program, script, what have you, that will accomplish the same task?
.It will take something like this:
>> Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this contin=
>> ent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the
>> proposition that all men are created equal.
and make it look like this:
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
It does a lot more, but my personal focus was for use with email messages. If, like me, you're interested in a utility like this, you can give it a look see here: TextSpresso 3
It comes with a 30 day trial and, in my opinion, registration is reasonable 8). Then again, you may know of a 'free' utility, program, script, what have you, that will accomplish the same task?
Comments
Originally posted by Towel
Many free text editors these days have grep-capable search-and-replace. With grep, you can make text do anything you want it to. This program seems nice and easy to use if you don't want to bother learning grep syntax, however.
Towel, thanks for the reply and the 'tip!' I will look into the "grep syntax" alternative
Is that what you meant?
--B
Originally posted by bergz
In Panther mail.app you can select text and right-click (ctrl-click) and change the "quote level" which will do exactly what you describe above. For some lame reason, Tiger's mail.app doesn't have it show up in the right click. It's now only above in the format menu. The keyboard shortcut is command+' and option+command+'.
Is that what you meant?
--B
Thanks for the reply bergz! No - although they're along the same lines, we're talking about 2 separate things. The increase / decrease quote level - at least in "Tiger" Mail.app, removes or adds verticial lines on the left side of the text in a forwarded or replied message, but does nothing with the '>' signs as mentioned it my original post
Originally posted by MrSin
Thanks for the reply bergz! No - although they're along the same lines, we're talking about 2 separate things. The increase / decrease quote level - at least in "Tiger" Mail.app, removes or adds verticial lines on the left side of the text in a forwarded or replied message, but does nothing with the '>' signs as mentioned it my original post
The vertical lines are how mail.app interprets ">". If you mail yourself a message like the following by manually sticking in the ">s":
> Hi.
> How Are you?
from yahoo or hotmail (not gmail nor mail.app itself) then the ">s" will become the lines you mention. If you do this with the text you want to manipulate, then you can use the Quote Level option on it.
--B
Originally posted by MrSin
Towel, thanks for the reply and the 'tip!' I will look into the "grep syntax" alternative
Sure! Try SubEthaEdit 2.2. You can enter regular expressions in any of several formats in the search/replace box, including grep and Perl. For example, the following Perl regular expression will clean up your sample text, if you search for it and replace with nothing:
(=\\s)*\
*>>\\s
Regex's tend to look like gobbledegook, but once you decipher the symbols and special characters, they're a very powerful and flexible way to do anything you want with text. I'm surprised that Word, etc. are so far behind in implementing regex searches, while the little free apps are all over it.
Originally posted by Towel
Sure! Try SubEthaEdit 2.2. You can enter regular expressions in any of several formats in the search/replace box, including grep and Perl. For example, the following Perl regular expression will clean up your sample text, if you search for it and replace with nothing:
Towel, sorry for the delay in thanking you for the suggestion - I have SubEthaEdit 2.2, so will give it a try. Thanks!