[Hx] Safely Directly Editing Collection Files

[Michael S. Scaramella, Esq. MSS@ScaraHoof.com]

To All,

With hopeful expectation that new BGD software will enable us to move beyond Helix 6, I have been completing some important development of Managing Partner®. Some of that has been “fit and finish” work needed before future commercial releases. I decided to conform capitalization of certain terms that have special meaning in the context of Helix-based applications, and to update certain proprietary terminology. For example, today I made sure that all uses of “Command Button” are capitalized, and that all references to a data “View” are capitalized while uses of “view” referring to seeing something are not capitalized. Using Helix RADE to do this would have been quite difficult and error prone, so I used a different method.

It is possible to directly edit a Collection file using a text editor, so long as only human-readable portions are edited and the number of characters in any string of text is not altered. I opened a copy of the latest Collection file for development using BBEdit and edited text as described above. This was very efficient and reliable, and produced a healthy Collection file with properly conformed capitalization of both structure and data. I hope that others find this bit of information helpful.

Regards,

Michael

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SCARAMELLA & HOOFNAGLE

Computer Division

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Voice: 856-424-2100

Web: http://www.ScaraHoof.com

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