Frequently Asked Questions
If you have technical support questions, send us email at grinder@matterform.com.
Or read some of our most frequently asked questions:
When I drag my files onto the HTML Grinder application icon, the Grinder refuses to load them. What gives?
Can't drag-and-drop · You drag files to the HTML Grinder application icon, but the HTML Grinder icon doesn't hilite and you can't drop the files into the Grinder. This sometimes happens immediately after downloading the Grinder. Solution: Rebuild your desktop file. Restart the computer and hold down the option key and the command key (the one with the Apple icon on it). Keep holding these keys down until your computer finishes restarting and you see the dialog box asking you if you want to rebuild your desktop. Answer in the affirmative. This will solve your problem.
Drag-and-drop works but no documents are loaded · The Grinder preferences are causing the Grinder to skip some or all of the documents you drag. The Grinder's default behavior is to load only documents which are suffixed with ".HTML". All other documents will be skipped. Solution: Choose "Preferences" from the Edit menu. Set the Grinder to load all documents you drag onto the Grinder icon, or set the Grinder to load documents with a different file suffix.
Short answer: Lots. You should have no problems at all grinding up to 300 or 400 documents in a single pass. When you go higher than that, you might run into a situation where the Grinder is unable to display the documents in the Loaded Documents window, but you can still Grind them.
If you ever run into problems grinding many documents or very large documents, try increasing the memory partition for the Grinder. Also, keep in mind that due to the nature of the task, the Eight Dot Three wheel might require a lot of memory to operate.
Anything I need to know to use the Grinder effectively with PageMill or other HTML editors?
The HTML Grinder works directly with HTML code, so generally any application that creates standard HTML code should work flawlessly with the HTML Grinder.
We have found one potential gotcha when using PageMill and the Grinder. PageMill inserts a lot of special characters into its HTML code and sometimes not all of these characters get displayed in PageMill's HTML editor. When you copy HTML code directly from PageMill, you're not copying the HTML code that is actually stored in the file, but a stripped-down version of it. Hence, the Grinder will not find the HTML code in your documents because what PageMill copied from your document is not what actually gets stored in the document.
To avoid this problem, just open your file in SimpleText or another standard text editor and copy your HTML code from there. This way, you can be sure that you are copying exactly what is contained in your HTML files, and the Grinder will have no problem finding it.
I drag documents onto the Grinder icon, but when I run a wheel, nothing happens to the files. The Grinder doesn't seem to be touching them at all.
Make sure the documents are loaded · Choose Loaded Documents from the Edit menu and confirm that the documents you want to change are actually loaded into the Grinder. If you have problems loading documents, read this note.
Check the wheel settings · Often, the problem is a simple typing error in one of the wheel dialog boxes. For example, you think you're searching for "TEXT", but in fact the Find field contains "TEXT " (same text but with a space at the end). Check to make sure that little mistakes like this aren't throwing off your results.
Check that the HTML files are true text files · You can drag any kind of file onto the HTML Grinder icon, but if the file is not truly a text file, the Grinder will skip the file during Grinding. To see if the file you are trying to Grind is really a text file, do this simple test: Choose "Open Text File..." from the Grinder's File menu. If the file does not appear in the dialog box and you cannot open it, it is not a text file. Solution: Open the documents in the text editor that created them and re-save them as a text-only or ASCII file. If you know that the files are text files but have incorrect type codes, you can drag the files onto the Grinder icon and use the Recreator wheel to change their file type code to TEXT.
When I run the Find and Replace wheel, it only makes some of the required changes. There are other strings of matching text, but the Grinder skips these and leaves them unchanged.
Make sure the documents are loaded · Choose Loaded Documents from the Edit menu and confirm that the documents you want to change are actually loaded into the Grinder. If you have problems loading documents, read this note.
Make sure the Find string really matches · Often, a string of text won't be changed because it differs slightly from the Find string. You can copy the string from the HTML document and paste it into the Find field to make sure you have an exact match. You might want to use the Glossary wheel to search for several variations at once.
Some wheels, like Sequential Linker and Appender, are putting in two copies of HTML code. It's as if I ran the Grinder twice.
Documents are being loaded twice · If a document appears twice in the "Loaded Documents" window, Grinder changes may be applied to that document two times. Check "Clear Loaded Documents Before Loading New Documents" in the Preferences to insure that you don't have any documents loaded twice.
When I search for an accented character (not the HTML version but the option-key version), the Grinder finds all characters, whether they have accents or not. For example, when I search for é (option-e+e), the Grinder finds é, e, è, and all the others.
Solution: Check the case sensitive button. The Grinder will limit its search to exactly what you type.
When are you going to create a PC Windows version of the HTML Grinder?
We are working on a new version of the Grinder which will run on Windows as well as MacOS. We will announce the software on our Web site as soon as it is available.
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