Perfect Internet-style quotes and DOS-Unix-Mac text conversion at your fingertips!!
A typical MagicBullets operation:
Select some text to modify. Any word processor will do. Press shift-command-C. Your text goes to the clipboard and the MagicBullets dialog appears in one stroke. You might choose to:
• Strip white space.
• Wrap the text to 64 characters.
• Quote the selection, inserting "Bill K >" as your custom string.
• Insert line feed characters.
Click OK, and you're done instantly. Paste the results anywhere you want. These and other handy operations are now available anytime, anywhere. Here are more reasons for choosing MagicBullets as your E-mail companion:
• Fully customizable.
• Handles any text.
• Remembers your settings.
• Intelligent.
• Fast.
• Can't be easier!
Requirements & Installation
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MagicBullets is a system extension (INIT), compatible with any Macintosh running System 6.0.5 or higher. It's easy to install-
1) Drag the MagicBullets extension to your System Folder.
2) Restart your Macintosh.
Note that you can bypass MagicBullets when your Macintosh starts up by holding down either the shift key or the space key. Of course, you can completely remove it from your system by dragging it out of the System Folder (System 6) or out of the Extensions Folder (a folder inside the System Folder, if running System 7).
Calling Upon MagicBullets
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MagicBullets offers two key sequences for calling up its settings dialog.
• Shift-command-C (think "shift-copy") first lets the active word processor copy the current text selection to the clipboard, then makes the MagicBullets dialog appear.
• Shift-command-' (think "shift-command-quote") calls up the MagicBullets dialog immediately, making it ready to work on any text already on the clipboard.
This key combination is especially useful for those commercial word processors such as Microsoft Word that already have a non-copy command assigned to shift-command-C, or that have a private clipboard. The text has to get to the global Macintosh clipboard for MagicBullets to see it and process it. If you have either of these difficulties, you can get the text onto the global clipboard and work with it there using these steps:
1) Use the application's usual copy command (command-C).
2) Switch to the Finder (or any other application). This forces the private clipboard to be moved to the global clipboard.
3) Press the MagicBullets shift-command-' sequence.
Note that you can use the Finder's Show Clipboard command (under the Finder's Edit menu) to see the result of MagicBullets' work before pasting it back into your document.
Feature Descriptions
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Note that features are grouped into sets of related features by the gray dotted lines in the dialog. Each feature group is entirely compatible with any other group. The groups are independent.
• Insert Bullets checkbox
If checked, your custom bullet-string will be inserted at the start of every new line in the selection. This has to be checked to edit the bulllet-string or to use the Smart Ellipses feature.
• Bullet text field
You can enter any bullet-string you want here, up to a 31 character maximum length. The dialog will beep if the string is too long. A standard style of bullet used on the Internet looks like "WJK > " (not including the double-quotes, of course). Here, WJK would be the initials of the person you are quoting.
• Smart Ellipses
This automatically scans the selection's beginning to see if it is a proper sentence-start. If not, a pseudo-ellipsis (three periods) is inserted before the start of the text. The same is done for the end of the text. Three periods are appended if the end is not a proper end-of-sentence. The ellipses help indicate that the quoted material is an exerpt from a lengthier quote than the portion you are displaying. Smart Ellipses understands fairly sophisticated punctuation. For example, it can recognize this sample [...end of text!'"] as being properly terminated, and not needing an ellipsis. Note that three periods are used because the true ellipsis character (option-;) is not a standard ASCII character recognized on all computers, but the period is universal.
• Line Breaks
On a Macintosh, lines usually end with a "carriage return," also known as return, CR, \r, or hex code 0x0D. On the other hand, DOS, Windows, and Unix machines commonly end lines with either a "line feed," (also called LF, \n, or hex 0x0A) or a CR-LF pair.
It does not matter how the lines in your selection end before applying MagicBullets. MagicBullets will force the lines to end according the option you select in its dialog.
This feature is useful for sending text to someone you know has a PC (choose the LF or CR-LF option to let them read the text easily). It is also useful for converting PC text to Macintosh (CR option) so you can read it.
• Line Length checkbox
If unchecked, no changes are applied to the number of characters on each line.
If checked, you get the following two alternative ways to format the text.
• Unbroken Paragraphs
This identifies the whole paragraphs in the text and converts any line breaks (CR, LF or CR-LF) into spaces. A properly typed paragraph is normally free of line breaks. Sometimes one forgets and types a return at the end of a sentence instead of letting the word processor wrap the text. This feature offers a quick check-and-clean-up.
• Force Lines To
This explicitly breaks lines (inserts CR or LF or CR-LF) so they are no longer than the number of characters you specify in the adjacent box. The length may be anything from 1 to 255 characters long. Any numbers outside this range will cause the dialog to beep. The length of your bullet-string and ellipsis insertion is accounted for when breaking lines. Also, every attempt is made to break lines at natural word boundaries. Breaks inside words may occur if you play with a really small line-length setting.
There are at least two good reason to apply forced line breaks to text you will send on the Net. Many readers have older displays that do not wrap text, and have a limited line length (often 64, 72 or 80 characters). Breaking lines allows them to read your important communication more easily. Secondly, if inserting bullets, and you are quoting a long unbroken paragraph, only one bullet will be placed at the start of the paragraph. This makes it difficult for the reader to tell what is quoted. More comonly, you will want the quote to appear as a series of individual lines with a bullet at the start of each.
• Strip Leading/Trailing Blanks
This removes all white space characters (line breaks, spaces, tabs, option-spaces) up to the first non-white text, and beyond the last non-white text. This tightens-up the text. It does not remove white either within or between paragraphs.
• Cancel
None of the changes you made in the dialog are either applied to the text or saved.
• OK
Makes the changes and saves the settings for next time.
Beep Sound (Error)
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If MagicBullets beeps without putting up its dialog, one of the following has occurred:
• The clipboard is empty-
Try copying your selection again.
• The application's copy command did not work-
Try copying the selection again, then going to the Finder and back to get your selection onto the global clipboard.
• Insufficient memory for MagicBullets to run-
Try freeeing-up more memory by closing windows, quitting unneeded applications, or enabling virtual memory.
Legal
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This (unmodified) Read Me file must accompany the (unmodified) MagicBullets extension if distributed to another person or service. Permission is hereby granted to freely distribute MagicBullets subject to those conditions.
Fee
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Your $5 donation (send to address below) will help fuel other nifty Macintosh enhancements. I have plenty of them in mind for you. Tell me you're interested!
Bill Karsh
6732 Banner Lake Circle
#6108
Orlando, FL 32821
Thanks in advance for your comments and suggestions. Send them to billKarsh@AOL.com.
Credits
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Thanks as always to Jametha Smith for her relentless quality assurance testing. "I'm gonna bang on it until I either break the app. or my keyboard, but something's got to give."
