There are many applications available for Linux that only focus on just one or a limited number of related simple tasks. Although simple and functionally limited, these applications can still be an important part of your productive workflow. Until recently I paid little attention to these kinds of single task applications from a blogger’s perspective because there is relatively little to write about, but I realized that I am not giving these often powerful tools the attention they deserve. So today I am starting a new series, namely the Mini Review, in which these simple applications get the attention they deserve. So in this article a first mini review for TextShine, a simple but powerful text modification tool for Linux.
What is TextShine
Textshine is a single task application originally developed for the elementary OS platform, but since it is available in Flatpak format it can be used on any Linux distribution.
TextShine is an application that focuses entirely on converting text to a specific format easily and quickly. I do not mean the file format here, but the format in which the text itself is converted, such as well-known text presentations such as camel case, title case, upper case, lower case, etc. But also options such as indent, change to curved quotes, double to single quotes, remove leading whitespace, etc. TextShine is therefore a powerful tool to easily implement large amounts of standardized changes to a text. Consider, for example, a coding assignment for which a standard naming convention with camel case must be applied based on a list of attribute names, or a messed up text from which duplicate sentences must be cleaned.
How does TextShine work
TextShine is simple and doesn’t really need much explanation. Copy a text or part of a text from your document, spreadsheet, web page, etc, and paste the text into TextShine. Select all or part of the text there and choose an action from the options provided under Actions to adjust the text to your liking.
Besides the fact that you can perform one action or if needed more actions in succession, you can also create and execute custom text conversions. These custom conversions can be created based on steps of different individual conversions.
TextShine also offers undo functionality and displays a number of statistics, such as number of characters, number of words or number of sentences. You can add your most used conversions to your Favorites for quick application.
Below a complete list of available Actions and their Groups:
Change Case
- Upper Case
- Lower Case
- Sentence Case
- Title Case
- Camel Case
- Snake Case
- Random Case
Convert
- Hard Wrap At 80 Characters
- Encode URL
- ROT 13
Indentation
- Indent One Level
- Unindent One Level
- Indent XML
Insert
- Insert Text (Start of Line)
- Insert Line Numbers
- Insert Lorem Ipsum
- Insert File Text
Markdown
- Convert Markdown to HTML
- Generate References
- Beautify Tables
Quotes
- Change to Curved Quotes
- Change to Straight Quotes
- Change to Angled Quotes
- Change to German Quotes
- Change to CJK Quotes
- Double to Single Quotes
Remove
- Remove Blank Lines
- Remove Duplicate Lines
- Remove Leading Whitespace
- Remove Trailing Whitespace
- Remove Line Breaks
- Remove Line Numbers
- Remove Matched Text
Repair
- Fix Spaces
Replace
- Tabs With 1 Space
- Three Periods With Elipsis
- Return With Space
- Single Return With 2 Returns
Search and Replace
- Find
- Regular Expression
- Replace Matched Text
- Invert Matched Text
- Clear Match Highlights
Sort
- Sort Lines
- Reverse Characters
- Move 1 Line Down
How to download and install TextShine
If you are an elementary OS user you can get TextShine directly from the elementary OS AppCenter. If you use another Linux distribution then download the Flatpak file by clicking on the link below:
If Flatpak support is not setup yet in your Linux installation, follow the guide that fits your distribution via below link:
Final Words
TextShine is a simple single task application that is doing only one thing, but it is doing it well. When you need to do specific bulk text conversions according to generic standards or based on your own custom standards, I think TextShine is a powerful little gem for you.
