14 DAY TRIAL // Mankind has always had a thirst for knowledge and learning new things for different purposes. The most common used form of learning or acquiring new information is done trough reading. Even though today's technology allows man to gain all needed information and more trough diverse media, text documents will never go out of fashion.
For computer users this is also an undeniable fact. Although no one can say that they use their PCs for reading, it's a well known fact that there are plenty of times when you need to go through various documentation stored in digital format. But when having to read a text on your computer there's a problem that usually emerges which is simply that not all text file formats are the same. This means that they can not be opened by the same reader. And when you consider the fact that there are quite a few different text file formats you start to think of the number of applications you might need in order to be sure you can read a simple text file. Luckily there are only a handful of text document formats that are commonly used around the world and they are PDF, TXT, RTF, DOC or ODT.
You might also notice that most of your applications come with help files that have the CHM extension (which makes this kind of text file available to most PC users). Another widely encountered text format is the HTML which is used by web pages. HTML extension might not seem at first glance to be a text file extension but if you think that almost every web page on the Internet has some text on it you will reconsider the affirmation.
All aforementioned formats can have their content read by Text Mining Tool, an application designed to extract the text from documents and save you the cost of specific programs that work with those file formats. Its interface is very simple and of course very easy to use because it has only 3 buttons, one for each feature it makes available. With Open you get to open the text on your computer and load it in the application (DOC, PDF and RTF formats only).
You can also save the text from the opened file (with the Save button) or choose to add it to the clipboard (with the Clipboard button) so that you may later paste it in a desired location. This simple program will allow you to read the text contained in the selected file and copy it but that's all. You will not be able to modify the text in any way (except after copying it to a text file). Unfortunately the "mined" text will not appear in an easily readable form regardless of its formatting. In a PDF reader for instance the text is neatly arranged, but when imported in Text Mining Tool there will be no formatting and this may create a discomfort on some level.
This situation occurs when the text file contains more than just simple text (like graphs, tables etc.) and as a result the text will be rearranged by Text Mining Tool. This also goes for some HTML files because of all the different objects that can be present on the original web page. Rearranging the text along with preserving the original font size and style give the user a real hard time deciphering the content.
On the other hand, when it comes to most HTML files you will notice that the extra objects simply disappear and the text is sometimes surrounded by empty spaces. Those spaces belong to an object that can not be viewed in Text Mining Tool.
However, when dealing with text files only and no special formatting is available or there are no additional objects embedded Text Mining Tool does a pretty good job at extracting the information. The major downside of the application is that it does not allow the user even the basic formatting of the "mined" text like aligning or removing blank spaces.
The Good
Text Mining Tool is a free, easy to use application that will let you read the text from several common format text files and will also allow you to extract the text or a part of it and save it in a different format (only you have to type in the extension) so that you may use or modify it later.
We tried saving the "mined" file as ODT text and there was absolutely no problem.
It is great if you want to open DOC, CHM, RTF or PDF files and do not have the application that specifically deals with these formats.
The Bad
Unfortunately if the opened text file contains something more than just text (as is often the case with PDF and HTML files) like pictures, tables, graphs and so on, the text will not preserve the original formatting, an action that could easily make the content harder to understand.
There are no text formatting options and only one font type and size will be used for the rendering.
The Truth
Text Mining Tool will show the text from the mentioned text format files but there are no text formatting options. If extracted text contains additional elements like tables, graphs or images, the result will definitely not be easy to handle.
It is designed to deal with text only and any irregularity in the document will lead to side-effects that could make the file almost unreadable.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
