A Discovery of another feature in OS X

[Xairbusdriver]

OK, I didn't discover this on my own. I was cleaning out podcasts stuff in iTunes and saw a <TWIT podcast > I hadn't viewed. It was discussing an item you may have never seen, mainly because it's in the "Services" menu, which few of us ever look.

Here's the deal:
1. Find a rather large text document, web site, a novel you're writing, whatever. Don't worry if there are images, sometimes helps to click the "Printer Friendly" version of a web site, however. Anyway, just select all the text ( command-A ) and copy it ( command-C ).
2. If it is a Cocoa program, select the Services menu. If you don't know if it's a Cocoa program, this is one way to find out. If there is a "Summarize" item available, the program is Cocoa based. Click the item and proceed to step 4.
3. If the "Summarize" menu is not available ( greyed out ), you need to paste the copied text into something that is Cocoa based; Apple's TextEdit is a great choice. Open the app and paste in the copied text. Now select the "Summarize" menu item.
4. The Summarize app should come with "sentences" pre-selected and set to 50% on the slider. You should already see that the text in the Summarize window is shorter than the original. Play with the slider and see how small you can make the 'summary'.

This could be useful for reporters who need to report the most important text of some event. Might be a good way of making notes about other web sites. I can see many uses.

Of course, I do not suggest creating your own Cliff's Notes series or attempting to pass these 'summaries' off as your own work. It's actually the work of a quite skilled Apple developer!

[kimmer]

This is really cool. Quick way to strip out extraneous stuff.

[Gregg]

Lacking the ability to try this myself, let me see if I understand...

It automatically edits text? It somehow takes out stuff that is not essential for getting the point across, and leaves the "meat" of the meaning?? If so, "how'd they do that?"!

[Mrious_be]

QUOTE(Gregg @ Mar 11 2007, 03:09 AM) [snapback]121596[/snapback]

It automatically edits text? It somehow takes out stuff that is not essential for getting the point across, and leaves the "meat" of the meaning?? If so, "how'd they do that?"!

Woow... Just tried it myself yes.
But, to answer your question... although it does filter out alot of text, it does not automaticly filter out things that are not essential for the entire text.
So in other words, it does not really give you a short, essential version of the text you already have but it just throwed out some stuff.
It's a nice thing to see, but to my feeling I wouldn't thrust it to much... or at least up on using that function, you still need to spend time to probably change some words and sentences to have them fit the document again.

Still... I didn't know about this either and like Airbusdriver mentioned... I bet Vista doesn't have this

[Xairbusdriver]

As with any 'computer' intelligence, what you consider 'essential' and what it provides may not completely match. But is is quite good at some text and could allow saving some things that you don't need to have/keep the complete original. And it's already in the OS! Been there a very long time, apparently, and is still being supported. Your basic understanding of what it is supposed to do, is correct, Gregg, but you'll not be able to use it at all!

And, as I said in the beginning, don't expect perfection. Even if you made your own, manual condensed version of some text, I doubt that it would be the same as some one else's. And maybe even different than another you made a month later!

[Gregg]

QUOTE(Xairbusdriver @ Mar 11 2007, 03:17 PM) [snapback]121658[/snapback]

Your basic understanding of what it is supposed to do, is correct, Gregg, but you'll not be able to use it at all!

I'd would rather to do my own editing be anyway.

[krissel]

Too bad we can't use it on some TS threads.