Text Studio

#What it is

Text Studio is Octoolo's text app: one page of plain text and a bar of tools that change it. It counts words, changes case, sorts and tidies lines, cleans up spaces and line breaks, finds and replaces (with patterns), pulls out emails and links, compares two versions and inserts placeholder text. Side panels add a translator that runs on the PC, a thesaurus with a word unscrambler and a Wordle helper, converters for Morse code, binary and fancy Unicode letters, and an English spelling and grammar checker. It takes the place of the many "online text tools" sites, Google Translate or DeepL for everyday text, and Grammarly's basic checks. Everything runs on the PC; the translator downloads each language direction once and then works offline.

#Opening it and what it costs

• Text Studio is free, the translator and the grammar checker included: it opens without Octoolo Cloud (the subscription). The free apps and the prices are in Prices and limits. The translator's language downloads are free too.
• On Octoolo's home screen Text Studio is in the Utilities group. The home screen's search finds it and each of its tasks ("word counter", "translate", "grammar", "thesaurus", "morse"...); the quick action Translate text opens it on the translator.
• Address: #/app/text, or #/app/text/<task> to open it on a task, for example #/app/text/translate or #/app/text/grammar-check. Opened on a task, a tip line under the bar says where that task is ("Pick url-slug in Case: each line becomes a web-address name.") and the menu to use pulses; a task with a panel opens its panel.
• Text Studio has no list down the left: everything is in the bar above the page.

#Tasks

• Word counter (word-counter): the bar at the bottom always shows words, characters, lines and the reading time, and the words and characters of the selection.
• Case converter (case-converter): Case menu: UPPER, lower, Title Case, Sentence case, camelCase, PascalCase, snake_case, kebab-case, CONSTANT.
• Remove duplicate lines (dedupe-lines): Lines, Remove duplicate lines, or Remove duplicates, ignoring case (also ignores spaces at the ends). Blank lines between paragraphs stay.
• Sort lines (sort-lines): Lines, Sort: A to Z, Z to A (numbers in order: 2 before 10; capitals ignored), Shortest first, Shuffle.
• Remove line breaks (remove-line-breaks): Clean, Join broken lines (the lines of a paragraph become one, paragraphs stay) or Remove all line breaks.
• Remove extra spaces (remove-spaces): Clean, Collapse extra spaces (two or more become one) or Trim spaces at the ends of lines; Lines, Remove empty lines.
• Find and replace (find-replace): Find (Ctrl F) opens the find bar with Replace with, Replace, Replace all, Match case, Whole words and Pattern.
• Compare text (compare-text): Compare opens a side box for the other version and shows the lines only in yours and only in the other.
• Slug generator (slug-generator): Case, url-slug: each line becomes a web-address name ("Café & Bar!" becomes "cafe-and-bar").
• Lorem ipsum (lorem-ipsum): Insert, One paragraph or Three paragraphs of placeholder text.
• Reverse text (reverse-text): Lines, Reverse the order of lines, Reverse the words or Reverse the letters.
• Add line numbers (line-numbers): Lines, Number the lines ("1. ", lined up), and Remove numbers and bullets.
• Extract emails & links (extract-emails): Extract, Email addresses, Links, Numbers, Phone numbers or Hashtags and mentions opens a side list.
• Translator (translate): the Translate panel, on the PC, 24 languages, and Translate a document… for Word files, PDFs and text files.
• Grammar checker (grammar-check): the Check panel: spelling, grammar and style in English, underlined in the text.
• Thesaurus (thesaurus): the Words panel's Synonyms: a word's meanings, each with words that mean the same, opposites, broader and narrower words.
• Word unscrambler (word-unscrambler): the Words panel's Unscramble, with Scrabble or Words With Friends scores; the same panel has a Wordle helper.
• Morse code translator (morse-code): the Convert panel's Morse code, both ways, played as sound and light.
• Text to binary (text-to-binary): the Convert panel's Binary: binary, hex, decimal or octal, and back.
• Fancy text generator (fancy-text): the Convert panel's Fancy text: 23 letter styles.

All twenty tasks work. None of Text Studio's tasks is "coming".

#How changes work

In Text Studio every change from Case, Lines and Clean works on the selection, or on all the text when nothing is selected (the bottom bar says "Changes apply to the selection" or "all the text"). A changed selection stays selected. Ctrl Z (or Undo) takes any change back, panel changes included, and Ctrl Y (Redo) puts it back. "Type or paste some text first." shows when the page is empty, and "Nothing to change." when the change would not change anything.

More in the menus:

• Clean: Straighten quotes (curly quotes become straight), Remove accents ("café" becomes "cafe"), Remove HTML tags, Tabs to spaces (a tab becomes 4 spaces).
• Insert: placeholder text (One paragraph, Three paragraphs), Today's date and Date and time, at the cursor.
• View: Wrap long lines (on by default) and Typewriter font (every letter as wide).
• Copy all copies all the text ("Copied all the text.").

The word count counts letters and digits joined by apostrophes and hyphens as one word; the reading time is at 238 words a minute.

#How to find and replace

1. In Text Studio press Find (Ctrl F). Selected text (one line) becomes what to find. Ctrl H opens the bar with the cursor in Replace with.
2. Type in Find. Every match is highlighted and counted ("12 matches", "3 of 12", "None"). Enter goes to the next match and Shift Enter to the previous one.
3. Type the new text in Replace with. Replace (or Enter in that box) replaces the current match; Replace all replaces every match ("Replaced 12 matches.").
4. Match case makes capitals count. Whole words finds only whole words. Pattern reads what you type as a regular expression (JavaScript syntax; ^ and $ are the start and end of a line; in Replace with, $1 puts back the first group). A pattern that is not valid shows "Not a pattern".
5. Escape, or the cross, closes the bar.

Matches are highlighted when the text is at most 300,000 characters (longer texts are still searched and replaced, without highlights), and up to 10,000 matches are counted.

#Compare and extract

• Compare in Text Studio opens "Compare with another version" beside the text: paste the other version into Paste the other version here. Below, each line shows as the same, "+" (only in the other) or "−" (only in yours), with the counts "+N only in the other" and "−N only in yours". It compares whole lines, not words within a line. Very long texts show "These texts are too long to compare line by line." (the two line counts multiplied must stay under 4 million).
• Extract in Text Studio lists what it finds in all the text: Email addresses, Links (http, https or www), Numbers, Phone numbers (at least seven digits) or Hashtags and mentions. Each once (on by default) removes repeats. Copy the list copies them one per line ("Copied N lines."); the list shows the first 2,000.

#Opening, saving and the draft

• Text Studio opens plain-text files with Open (Ctrl O) or by dropping a file on the page: .txt, .md, .csv, .tsv, .log, .json, .xml, .html, .css, .js, .ts, .ini, .yaml, .yml, .srt. A file is read as UTF-8 (a byte order mark is dropped); a file that is not valid UTF-8 is read as Windows' Western encoding (Windows-1252).
• Save (Ctrl S) writes back to the opened file; text not from a file, or a dropped file, asks where to save (the name "Text.txt" by default). Ctrl Shift S always asks (save as). Files are saved as UTF-8 without a byte order mark. "Saved name.txt" confirms; "It was not saved: …" gives the reason.
• The title bar shows the file's name ("Untitled text" when none) and "Not saved yet", "Saved" or "Kept here until you clear it".
• The page is kept as a draft while you work, also after Octoolo closes, until New clears it. Drafts longer than 2,000,000 characters are not kept.
• Text Studio is plain text: bold, colors, pictures and tables are not kept. Word, PDF and other documents open in their own apps, except in the translator's Translate a document….

#The translator

Text Studio's Translate panel translates the selection, or all the text, with Opus-MT models (from the University of Helsinki) running on the PC's processor. Nothing is uploaded.

1. Press Translate in the bar. The panel opens on the right.
2. From: Detect the language (it then shows "From · detected" and the language) or a language. To: the language to translate into. The arrows between them swap the two.
3. The first time a pair is used it shows what it needs, for example "Spanish → English needs a one-time download of 131 MB, with the AI engine that runs it." Press Download (131 MB); a bar shows the progress and Stop stops it. When done: "Spanish to English is ready, and works offline."
4. With Translate as you type on (the default), the translation shows and follows your typing after each pause; sentences translated before are reused, so only changed sentences run again. Otherwise press Translate the selection or Translate all the text. Long texts show "Translating… 12 of 80 sentences".
5. Use the result: Copy ("Copied the translation."), Replace (puts it in place of the selection or all the text) or Insert below (adds it after the selection or the text, on a new line). When the text changed since, the translation is greyed with "The text changed since." and Replace and Insert below wait for a new translation.

Under the result it says the pair and the time it took. "Machine translation makes mistakes: check anything important." Line breaks, blank lines, indents, bullets and numbering stay as they were; lines without words (numbers, links, email addresses) are left as they are. Into Chinese, punctuation is turned into Chinese punctuation; Arabic shows right to left.

#Translator languages and directions

Text Studio's translator has 24 languages, each direction a model of its own:

• Both ways with English (17): Arabic, Chinese (written in simplified characters), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese.
• Into English only (6): Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Thai, Turkish. In To they are listed under "Only into English for now" and cannot be chosen.
• Between two languages other than English, the translation goes through English, with both models ("Spanish to German goes through English."): for example Spanish to German uses Spanish → English and English → German, and Japanese to French uses Japanese → English and English → French. Nothing can be translated into Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Thai or Turkish, from English or from another language.
• Download sizes: each direction is 103.6 to 132.3 MB (for example English → Spanish 115.6 MB, English → Italian 131.9 MB, English → Vietnamese 103.6 MB; the panel rounds them, "116 MB"). The first translation also downloads the AI runtime once (15.4 MB), shared with Octoolo's other AI tools. A pair through English needs both directions' models. The full list of sizes is in Downloads on first use.
• Detecting the language: it recognises the script (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Hindi, Thai, Cyrillic, with Ukrainian told from Russian by its letters) or common words and letters of the Latin-alphabet languages. With a few words it may say "Not sure it is French? Pick the language in From."; with too little text, "Type a few more words, or pick the language in From."
• Languages at the bottom of the panel lists the directions downloaded on this PC, each with its size and Remove ("Spanish → English was removed. It downloads again when needed."). Octoolo's Settings, Downloaded parts, Translator languages, lists and removes them too.

#How to translate a document

Text Studio's Translate a document… (at the bottom of the Translate panel) translates a whole file and saves the result as a new file. It uses From (or detects the language) and To.

1. Pick the languages in the panel and download them if asked.
2. Press Translate a document… and choose a .docx, .pdf, .txt or .md file.
3. The panel shows "Translating report.docx: 40 of 120 sentences" with Stop ("The document was not translated.").
4. A Save dialog offers the name with the language added, for example report (Spanish).docx.

What is kept:

• Word files (.docx): saved as a Word file with headings, lists, tables, pictures and paragraph styles kept. Each paragraph is translated as one piece: formatting on part of a paragraph (a bold word, an italic phrase, a link) is lost, formatting on the whole paragraph is kept. The Word file is read and written by Octoolo's own Documents app, so what that app cannot read may be lost; the saved message then adds a note.
• PDFs: the text is read page by page into paragraphs (bigger type becomes headings) and saved as a Word file, one page break per PDF page: "The PDF's text is in a Word file; its layout and pictures are not." A scanned PDF has no text: "This PDF has no text in it: its pages may be pictures (a scan). Make it searchable with image to text first."
• Text (.txt, .md): saved as the same kind of file. Line breaks, blank lines, bullets and numbering are kept; other Markdown marks (such as # or **) go through the translator with the words and may come out changed.

Other messages: "Octoolo could not tell this document's language. Pick it in From, then try again.", "This file has no text in it.", "This document is already in Spanish." (for a text file: "This file is already in Spanish."), "Octoolo translates Word files (.docx), PDFs and text files.", and, when the models are not downloaded, "This needs a download first (131 MB). Pick the document's language in From, download it here, then try again."

#Spelling and grammar (Check)

Text Studio's Check panel finds spelling, grammar and style mistakes with Harper (made by Automattic), which comes inside Octoolo and runs on the PC. English only.

• Pick the English: English (US), English (UK), English (Canada), English (Australia), English (India). The first time it picks the one that matches the language Octoolo's window reports (UK English for en-GB, en-IE and en-NZ; Canada, Australia or India for en-CA, en-AU or en-IN), otherwise US English.
• The first check takes a few seconds ("Getting the checker ready…"), then it checks again each time you stop typing. Mistakes are underlined in the text, colored by kind, and listed in the panel: "N things to look at", filtered by All, Spelling, Grammar and Style.
• Each card has the problem, its message and its fixes: click a fix to apply it. Fix all N like this fixes every identical mistake ("Fixed N mistakes. Ctrl Z takes them back."). Add to dictionary (for spelling) adds the word to Your dictionary, where the cross takes it out again. Ignore hides that one mistake until Octoolo closes.
• Putting the cursor in an underlined word shows its card; clicking a card selects the word.
• Texts longer than 400,000 characters are checked up to there ("This text is long, so only its first 400,000 characters are checked."); 300 mistakes are listed at a time.
• With no mistakes: "Spelling, grammar and style look fine. Keep writing: it checks again as you type."

#Thesaurus, word unscrambler and Wordle (Words)

Text Studio's Words panel has three tabs.

Synonyms (the thesaurus, from WordNet 3.1, English):

• Double-click a word in the text, or type one in Look up a word and press Look up. Opening the panel with the cursor in a word looks it up.
• It lists the word's meanings by Noun, Verb, Adjective and Adverb, most used first, each with its definition, the words that mean the same, and Opposite, Broader and Narrower words. A form such as "running" or "ran" shows the meanings of "run" ("a form of run").
• When the panel says "Click a word to put it in place of “running” in your text." (a word was selected or double-clicked, or the cursor was in it when the panel opened), clicking a word puts it in place of that word, in the same form and capitals ("“running” is now “sprinting”. Ctrl Z takes it back."). When it says "Click a word to copy it. Select a word in your text to change it instead.", a click copies the word. The arrow next to a word looks that word up; the back arrow returns to the word before.
• A word it does not know: "“word” is not in the thesaurus." with "Did you mean …?" suggestions. Names of people and places are not in it.

Unscramble (from ENABLE, a list of 172,820 English words used by word games):

• Type Your letters (a ? is a blank tile that can be any letter; *, _ and . work too). Every word of 2 letters or more that the letters make is listed, longest first.
• Narrow it with Starts with, Ends with, Contains and Length (Any, 2 to 15 letters).
• Scores: None, Scrabble or Words With Friends shows each word's letter values (before bonus squares; blanks count nothing).
• Click a word to copy it. The first 1,500 words are shown.

Wordle (a helper, English):

• Type each word you guessed (five letters) and Add, then click its letters until they have the colors Wordle gave them (grey, yellow, green).
• It lists the words that still fit ("N words still fit"), better-known words first and, among them, those that rule out the most. The first 300 are shown. "No word fits these colors. Check them against the game."

#Morse code, binary and fancy text (Convert)

Text Studio's Convert panel converts the selection, or all the text, and shows the result with Copy and Put in place of the selection (or of all the text). Above 200,000 characters only the start is converted ("Only the first 200,000 characters are converted. Select a part to convert that.").

• Morse code: text to International Morse code (letters, digits, common punctuation and À, Ä, Ç, È, É, Ñ, Ö, Ü), letters apart by a space and words by a slash. Text that is already dots and dashes is read back as text. Play the code plays it as beeps, with Flash a light, Speed (5 to 40 words a minute, 18 by default) and Tone (300 to 1000 Hz, 600 by default). The Morse alphabet shows the table. Characters without a code are left out ("No Morse code for …: left out."); groups that are not Morse show as � ("N groups are not Morse code (shown as �).").
• Binary: each character's UTF-8 bytes as Binary, Hex, Decimal or Octal, with Between bytes: Space, Nothing or Comma. Letters with accents and emoji take two to four bytes. Binary, hex or decimal on the page is read back as text ("This reads as binary bytes, so it is shown as text." with Make binary of it instead).
• Fancy text: 23 styles: Bold, Italic, Bold italic, Sans bold, Sans italic, Sans bold italic, Script, Bold script, Gothic, Bold gothic, Double-struck, Typewriter, Small capitals, Tiny, Circled, Circled, dark, Squared, Squared, dark, Full width, Upside down, Struck through, Underlined, Slashed. Click a style to copy the text in it; the arrow puts it in place. These are look-alike Unicode letters: "Some apps, searches and screen readers do not read them as words, so keep them for a name, a bio or a heading." Some styles have no digits or capitals; those characters stay plain.

#Options and settings

• View: Wrap long lines, Typewriter font.
• Translator: From, To and Translate as you type are remembered.
• Check: the English chosen and Your dictionary are remembered.
• Words: the Scores choice is remembered. Convert: the number base, Between bytes, and the Morse speed, tone and light are remembered.
• In Octoolo's Settings, Downloaded parts: the AI runtime and Translator languages, each with Remove.

#Keyboard shortcuts

#Where it keeps things

• The page's draft, the View choices, the translator's languages and Translate as you type, the checker's English and Your dictionary, and the panels' choices are kept in Octoolo's window storage (WebView2's storage in %LOCALAPPDATA%\com.octoolo.app\EBWebView\). New clears the draft.
• Translator models: %LOCALAPPDATA%\com.octoolo.app\engines\models\mt-<from>-<to>\ (for example mt-en-es; Portuguese is mt-en-romance and mt-romance-en), and the AI runtime in %LOCALAPPDATA%\com.octoolo.app\engines\onnxruntime\.
• The thesaurus, the word list and the grammar checker are inside Octoolo (no download).
• Uninstalling Octoolo keeps that folder unless "Delete the application data" is ticked on the uninstaller's first page.

#Downloads it needs

• The translator only: each language direction once (103.6 to 132.3 MB) from Hugging Face, and the AI runtime (ONNX Runtime and DirectML, 15.4 MB) from Microsoft's NuGet packages the first time any AI tool needs it. Each download is checked against its fingerprint and resumes if interrupted. After that the translator works offline.
• Everything else in Text Studio (the thesaurus from WordNet 3.1, the ENABLE word list, the Harper grammar checker) comes with Octoolo and works offline from the start.

#Privacy

Nothing typed in Text Studio leaves the PC. The translator runs on the PC (only the model files are downloaded, never your text), the grammar checker runs on the PC, and the word tools search lists kept in Octoolo. Saving a file uses a normal Save dialog. Octoolo's usage statistics count that a tool was used or a file saved, never the text.

#Troubleshooting

#The translator asks for a download, or the download fails

Text Studio's translator needs each direction's model once. The download needs the internet; if it fails it shows "The download failed: …" with the reason (for example "Could not reach the download server" or "the file arrived damaged (its checksum did not match). Try again."). Check the connection, a firewall or proxy that blocks huggingface.co or api.nuget.org, and free disk space, then press Download again: it continues where it stopped. Once downloaded, no internet is needed.

#I cannot translate into Japanese (or Hindi, Korean, Polish, Thai, Turkish)

In Text Studio's translator, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Thai and Turkish can only be translated into English: in To they are greyed out under "Only into English for now". Swapping a pair whose source is one of them says "Octoolo cannot translate into Japanese yet." Languages not in the list of 24 cannot be translated at all.

#The translation is in the wrong language, or nonsense

Text Studio's Detect the language guessed wrong (short texts are hard to guess). Pick the language in From. "The text is already in Spanish." means From and To are the same: use Translate it into … or change To.

#The translation is slow, or does not follow my typing

Text Studio's translator runs on the processor, sentence by sentence. The first translation after a while also loads the model. Texts over 20,000 characters are not translated as you type: press Translate all the text (or Translate the selection). A pair through English runs two models.

#The translated Word file lost some formatting

Translate a document… translates each paragraph as one piece, so bold or italic on part of a paragraph, and links inside a paragraph, are lost; the text of a PDF comes out as a Word file without its layout or pictures. A scanned PDF needs image to text first.

#The grammar checker does not work

Text Studio's Check is English only: other languages show many false spelling mistakes. "The checker stopped." with a reason means it could not load or crashed: close the panel and open it again, or restart Octoolo. The first check takes a few seconds.

#"This panel did not open: …"

A Text Studio side panel failed to load. The text and the rest of Text Studio keep working. Close the panel and open it again, or restart Octoolo, and report the message through Help and feedback if it stays.

#My text is gone

Text Studio keeps the page as a draft until New is pressed. A draft over 2,000,000 characters is not kept: save long texts as files. Ctrl Z undoes changes made since the page was opened.

#An opened file shows wrong characters

Text Studio reads files as UTF-8, or as Windows-1252 when they are not valid UTF-8. Files in other encodings (for example UTF-16, Cyrillic or Asian code pages) show wrong characters. Saving writes UTF-8.

#Find says "Not a pattern"

Pattern is on in Text Studio's find bar and what was typed is not a valid regular expression (for example an unclosed bracket). Fix it, or turn Pattern off to find the text as typed.

#Limits and what it cannot do

• It edits plain text only: no bold, fonts, pictures or tables, and it cannot open Word or PDF files for editing (only translate them).
• The translator cannot translate into Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Thai or Turkish, cannot translate languages outside its 24, works only after its download, and cannot translate pictures, speech or websites. It has no glossary and no formal/informal choice.
• The grammar checker and the thesaurus, unscrambler and Wordle helper are English only. The checker cannot rewrite sentences, change tone or check plagiarism.
• Compare works line by line, not word by word, and cannot compare files directly (paste the other version).
• It cannot read text from pictures (use image to text from the Photo Editor) or read text aloud (the Morse player only beeps).
• Fancy text cannot change the font of other apps: it is look-alike characters.