Checking a document for spelling errors is not one of my favorite tasks. I usually receive a lot of false hits, thanks to the nature of the technical manuals in my current job. For example, some manuals include a long series of part numbers that would never appear in the official dictionary used by the [...]
Arbortext Editor has a nice feature that enables you to check a document for various types of errors. To use this feature, go to the Tools menu and click Check Completeness. If any problems are found, Arbortext displays a window that lists the errors. I usually find that my document contains a bunch of broken [...]
As I was glancing through the Arbortext Editor menus not long ago, I came across the macro feature. Where I work, we are always looking for ways to do things more efficiently, so I decided to check out this tool. To record a macro, you go to the Tools menu, point to Macros, and click [...]
In an earlier post, Douglas Wade reviewed the basics of collapsing and expanding in Arbortext Editor. I would like to add a few thoughts about this feature as it relates to tables. I recently started working on some SGML files that have large tables. I’m talking really large. I found that the performance of [...]
In Arbortext Editor, a text entity is a named piece of content. For example, you could create a text entity called Product Name with the content Widget Analyzer 2010. Text entities help you to achieve consistency both within and across documents. Simple enough, right? Let’s assume that you have an SGML file open and you [...]
One thing that I think about all the time is how to improve documentation. One thing I would like to have is documentation that is context sensitive in Arbortext and collaborative. At work we have a style guide which determines “what” we are to do but rather than “how” to do it. Many years ago, [...]
ACL, Arbortext’s Command Language, it is similar to Perl which is the programming language I prefer. See Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. Arrays Arrays are special variables with multiple “compartments”. Each compartment holds a value. Arrays consist of names and indexes. ACL has two types of one-dimensional arrays: Normal arrays are indexed by [...]
Using Arbortext Editor, selecting a column can take some time. This tip is a quick and easy way to select the entire column. As well as, performance will be better when the table is collapsed or in view markup mode.
A tip showing how to paste a single object like a cross reference from one cell into multiple cells of a table in Arbortext Editor.
Arbortext has a really great help system. A writer or developer should be using it often. For me, I have placed a shortcut on my desktop. The help file is in the format of Microsoft compiled help (extension .chm). It is located in <arbortext-installation>/help folder and is called help.chm. Double-click to launch the file. If you [...]