Technical 11: Text Conversion Libraries

2003 TextMaestro Technologies

	Technical
1.	Introduction
2.	Main Toolbar
3.	Session Toolbar
4.	FTP Toolbar
5.	File Attributes
6.	Project Manager
7.	Account Manager
8.	Browse Remote System
9.	Text Conversion Dialog
10.	Text Conversion Attributes
11.	Text Conversion Libraries
12.	Text Conversion Rules
13.	Text Conversion Batch Mode
14.	Text Conversion Command Line
15.	Report
16.	Diff-and-Merge
17.	Cross Listings
18.	Program Options
19.	Save Program Data

11. Text Conversion Libraries

If you click on Text Conversion button from Main toolbar, the Interactive Text Conversion dialog will appear. If you keep Shift key pressed while clicking, then the Batch Text Conversion dialog will appear. See here.

From either dialog, click on Library button, the following Library dialog will appear.

Note that there are two list boxes here. The left list contains name of libraries. The right list contains macros of the selected library. Thus there can be multiple libraries, each consisting of multiple macros. The conversion process works against the currently selected library. The buttons on the left side relate to the libraries, and those on the right relate to the macros of the selected library. Description about the buttons is listed below.

Libraries: (left list)

	Moves selected library up.
	Moves selected library down.
	Adds a new library to the list.
	Modifies the name of the selected library.
	Deletes the library from memory. This is irreversible.
	Imports macros from other library to current library.
	Adds a new library whose macros are automatically derived from text found on Output window. Note that the text is required to be in a format such that one line is dedicated to Find text and next, to Replace text, as shown below: Find-text Replace-text Find-text Replace-text ... ...
	Imports libraries from file. The directory: C:\TMT-WorkFiles\Loading-Area is the designated loading area for all import facilities, which can be however overridden.
	Exports (dumps) selected libraries to a user specified file. Then you can import the library from this file on a different computer.

Macros: (right list)

	Moves selected macro up.
	Moves selected macro down.
	Each item in the list defines a macro for Find and Replace conversion scheme. The order of these macros is important. Conversion process uses these macros in the order they are listed in the library. Using the above two arrows, one can have the macros in any specific order. The macros can also be sorted using the table headers.
	Adds a new macro.
	When you click on the Add button, this dialog box appears. Various items on this dialog box appears on the columns of the list control above. Also note that when you click on Use Wild-card, the scheme enters into an advanced mode where the rules assume extended meanings. The items shown disabled here also enable and disable based on the use of wild-card mode. See Text Conversion Attributes for a better understanding of controls seen here.
	Duplicates the selected macro.
	Modify various parts of the selected macro.
	Modify attributes of a set of macros. (Find and Replace strings themselves cannot be modified).
	Deletes the macro from the list. It is irreversible.
	Activates the selected macros.
	De-activates the selected macros.
	Note that a library may have multiple macros. When you hit the Convert button, the conversion process uses all the active macros one after another. The definitions of macros and their effects on the input text can be quite complicated, especially when the conversion is in wild-card mode. There comes time when you want to execute just one macro to verify its correctness and hide the effects of others while debugging it. In that case, you can simply de-activate the supposedly stabilized macros, and activate those which need to be debugged. If you de-activate all the macros in a library, conversion process treats that library nothing beside an empty table. Therefore, that conversion will make no change to the input text.
	Exports current macro to the Interactive Text Conversion window.
	Performs Find And Replace conversion where input text comes from Input window and the output is placed onto Output window. This is referred to as Convert button.
	Note that Convert button from Interactive Text Conversion window exercises the macro seen there. But, the Convert button seen here on Text Conversion Library dialog exercises all the active macros of the library.
	Opens Wild-Card Manager dialog as shown below: Here user can define his own set of type-cards. In gist, wild-card denotes "anything", and type-card denotes one or more of the character set assigned to it. What you see above is the default setting. Every Find and Replace library has its own Wild-Card manager, thereby, its own set of type-cards. Type cards are extremely useful when you want to parse various log files where you want to identify a certain sequence of characters as a set, and then grab them by the corresponding type-card during parsing.