Salt Lake City, Utah—April 18, 1996—TopSoft, Inc., today released their innovative new FREE Macintosh software utility called “FilterTop.”
FilterTop is a multipurpose file-processing utility program that provides Macintosh users with the facilities of batch processing and pipelining, formerly available only to users of operating systems with a command-line interface, like Unix. These advantages allow Mac users to process from one to thousands of files—of any type—at one time, performing numerous different operations on these files in quick succession, all within the context of the friendly graphical user interface Macintosh users expect and deserve.
FilterTop comes with a set of more than fifty “filters,” program modules that may be arranged in virtually limitless permutations and combinations by dragging their icons between windows with the mouse. Similarly, batches of files may be sent for processing to a saved group of filters, called a SuperFilter, with a simple drag-and-drop operation.
To give just a few examples of what FilterTop can do, in a given filtering operation the names of files may be changed, the contents of the files altered, rearranged, or combined, specific characters or entire words or phrases searched for and replaced, information extracted or added. Sets of files of different kinds may be sent to separate folders and even their types changed by changing their internal file-type and “creator” codes. Lists may be alphabetized and have line numbers added. MS-DOS or Unix file formats may be changed to Macintosh format and vice versa. Any combination of these and many other operations may be performed simultaneously with a click of the mouse. The results may be timed, sent to a special monitor window, saved as new files, summarized in a report, placed on the Clipboard—all as the user desires.
FilterTop takes full advantage of the advanced features of System 7.5 (though it will run perfectly well on any Mac with System 7.0 or later). Saved SuperFilters called “Toplets” communicate with FilterTop by means of Apple Events to provide information about the files that have been dragged to the Toplet’s icon in the Finder. Toplets, actually small applications that occupy very little disk space, also send to the FilterTop engine messages that convey information about the group of filters saved in the SuperFilter. This enables a preset complex series of operations to be started immediately on a batch of hundreds or thousands of files by simply dragging the files’ icons to the Toplet icon.
More than this, FilterTop is “threaded,” so numerous filtration operations, each with its own set of steps, can be performed on different sets of files at the same time.
A key feature of FilterTop is its modularity. As users discover new needs, they can acquire new filters with different functionality by downloading them from TopSoft’s FTP site. These filters can be “plugged in” and linked to any others as needed to perform new combinations of tasks without changing the basic FilterTop application itself. This also means that FilterTop is indefinitely extensible and new filters can be created to fill new needs.
FilterTop provides numerous facilities that make filters easy to write. Users with some knowledge of computer programming—and, of course, professional developers—can write filters themselves and are encouraged to contribute in this manner to the ever-growing functionality of FilterTop. (TopSoft will consider any such “third party” filters for inclusion in its collection available at the TopSoft FTP site.) The FilterTop package comes with manuals, templates, and other aids that will be of use to novice and advanced programmers alike.
FilterTop also comes with a full set of online help files that are viewable through the “About Box.” The FilterTop About Box is as innovative as the FilterTop application itself. It is equally modular and extensible, and help files, in the form of “slides,” may easily be added by the user as new or revised ones become available.
FilterTop was developed by a dedicated group of Macintosh programmers and enthusiasts from around the world, starting in 1991. This team is part of TopSoft, Inc., a nonprofit organization, incorporated in the state of Utah, that operates entirely over the Internet. Its mission is to develop high-quality innovative software and provide it free or at very low cost to Macintosh users everywhere. All those who are interested in participating are invited to contact TopSoft for more information.
FilterTop is a copyrighted but freely available product obtained by anonymous FTP from the server at topsoft.org.
The full FilterTop package may be obtained with the following URL:
