GENBOX-L Archives

Archiver > GENBOX > 2004-11 > 1100493000


From: "Cheri Casper" <>
Subject: RE: [GENBOX] Green bracketed text?
Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2004 20:30:10 -0800
In-Reply-To: <002501c4cabf$28713a90$6401a8c0@micronxp>


Tom - The use of the backslashes to precede a literal square bracket was
delineated in one set of Release Notes. I've used the [[] and []] since the
early days nearly 2 years ago (when GB was first released in Feb. of 2003)
and don't recall when or where I learned that part.

However, as Kathy said, you can just leave them as [this is text and not a
code] and simply change the coloration in Preferences so they appear black.
Is there a significant difference as long as your ultimate output is what
you desire?

CheriC

-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Morris [mailto:]
Sent: Sunday, November 14, 2004 7:00 PM
To:
Subject: RE: [GENBOX] Green bracketed text?


> How would GenBox know that you wanted literal square
> brackets or where using them to add codes?

That's precisely the problem that I'm highlighting. Genbox has overloaded a
single key with two meanings so that it is ambiguous. Sometimes it means
"insert square bracket in text" and sometimes it means "begin code word."
Not only is this ambiguity allowed to exist in both text imported from
GEDCOM and text entered through the UI, but it's opened ended since
something which is valid and behaves one way today can change its behavior
in the future when new code words are added.

> When this first became an issue (many, many releases
> ago), I simply did a query for any note field that had a
> square bracket in it and did my fix there.

Placing the onus on the user to get it right is one possibility of course,
but most users aren't going to know that they're doing it wrong in the first
place. Additionally, it's much much easier for the computer to get it right
than all of the many and varied users.

If the number of code words stays small, this should be mostly a theoretical
problem rather than a practical problem, but there's really no reason for
the problem to exist at all.

Tom




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