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Localization and plain-text output

This part of the wizard is only seen when you process a file for recompile compatibility.

About the localization option

This option was added so that helpfiles can be decompiled in a format designed to simplify data management where several sets of source text are required for localization. It's not an option you'll need for most of your processing requirements, but as you'll see in a moment it can be useful even if you don't need localization or databasing.

When you select this option, a file with a .TXT extension is generated in the output directory which lists all topic titles, assigns unique numbers to each formatting type used in the helpfile, and shows the locations of all new topics.

Two types of tags are used: Txt#nnnnn= and Key#nnnnn= where n is a digit between 0 and 9. Txt tags identify text format types, while Key tags identify keyword footnotes. New topic lines can also be treated as a tag or delimiter.

How to replace the formatting tags for generating true plain-text output

If your editor or word processor supports single-character wildcards in search-and-replace operations, then replacing all of these tags is as simple as replacing all "Txt#?????=", "Key#?????=" and "------------------- New topic -------------------" strings with empty strings. The resulting output may have some extraneous line breaks and new topic identifiers but will otherwise be a complete flat ASCII representation of the helpfile's text content.

Also note that the paragraphs in the output do not include line breaks at the 256th character as is normal with Microsoft RTF output, and that individual lines may be much longer unless broken up by differences in formatting.

How to use the Txt and Key tags to manage decompiled data

The Txt and Key tags can be used as delimiters when importing the data into databases. They can also be used as search codes in your word processor to mark the starting points for search-and-replace application of new formatting styles. New topic lines can be replaced with page breaks or used as end-of-record markers.

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