Menu File

This menu item includes sub items for management of documents in the CLaRK system. The documents that the system recognizes are XML well-formed documents. These documents can be divided into two kinds. The documents of the first kind are outside of the system. The system can work with these documents if they are imported inside the system. The external documents must have one of the following character encodings: ASCII, UNICODE (UTF-8), UNICODE (UTF-16BE) or UNICODE (UTF-16LE). The documents of the second kind are imported into the system and stored in an internal representation. When a document is processed inside the system, it has to be connected with a document type definition (DTD). The DTD has to be compiled in an internal representation before being assigned to the document. The document loaded in the active view of the system is called a current document.

Sub-Menus:

New

A default shortcut Ctrl+N
An icon on the toolbar

Choosing this item, the user creates a new empty document. First, a menu for choosing a DTD appears. The user can create a document with respect to one of the DTDs compiled into the system. If the appropriate DTD is not compiled, then the user has to close the dialog and compile the required DTD. After choosing the DTD, a new document, containing only the root element with empty content is created. In most cases this document will not be valid.

Open

A default shortcut Ctrl+O
An icon on the toolbar

By choosing this item, the user opens document(s) saved in the internal document database of the system. A Document Manager window is opened on the screen.

The user has to point out to a certain document and click the Open button. Then the corresponding document is loaded into the system. The internal documents are stored together with information for their DTD. If their DTD is compiled in the system, then they are opened with respect to it. If the DTD is deleted (for some reason) from the DTD database of the system, the user is asked to choose a DTD from the available ones.

The user can choose document(s) to open in two modes:

If the Cancel button is chosen, the manager window closes and no document is loaded into the system.

The user can also open a document in the manager by performing a double click on a certain document name either in the list of all documents or in the list of the current group.

Note that Open menu does not open text files. If the you want to load an XML document from a text file, then choose Import XML item.

Save

A default shortcut Ctrl+S
An icon on the toolbar

By choosing this item, the user saves the current document in the internal document database of the system. The user has to give a name to the document in a dialog box. Optionally the user can specify a document group in which the document should be included. Then the system tries to save the document. If there exists a document with the specified name, the user is asked to confirm the overwriting of the document or to choose a new name.

Document Manager

This component is responsible for the management of the internal documents in the CLaRK System.

The Internal Documents Database is an essential part of the CLaRK system. It is the place where all documents saved in the system are stored. The main reason for maintaining such a database is that the system can work only with well-formed XML documents and having them stored in an internal format prevents the system from malfunctioning because of incorrect data. This database protects the documents from being corrupted. In addition, keeping the documents "invisible" for other applications allows saving additional system specific information with them. The interface of the documents with external applications can be done by import/export operations. A successfully imported document in the system has a guaranteed well-formed structure. An exported document from the system is always a well-formed XML document stored in a file, which can be used by other XML oriented applications.

The Internal Document Database represents a set of repositories, called Corpora which contain the saved documents in the system. The different corpora are identified by unique (user supplied) names. Each corpus contains a set of documents which are stored independently from the documents of other corpora. No documents can be saved outside a corpus. The documents within a corpus are identified by unique names, i.e. no two documents can have the same name. If it is necessary that two or more documents should have the same name, they must be stored in different corpora.

The possible operations on corpora are:

Corpora are document containers only, so it is not possible a corpus to contain another corpus. Each corpus has its own internal logical structure which facilitates the maintenance of many documents at the same time. The documents within a corpus are organized in groups. Each group can contain a set of documents, as well as a set of subgroups. Each group is identified by an unique name within the group in which it is included, but not necessary unique for the containing corpus. The supported operations on groups are: creating a new group or a subgroup of a group; renaming a group and removing a group. The user can include or exclude documents in a group.

The groups are logical unions of documents which do not impact physically the documents themselves. This means that if a document is removed (excluded) from a group, the document itself is not deleted from the database, but just excluded from this union. Thus the same document can be included in more than one group, as well as a document can be included in none.

Note: technically said, the groups contain not documents, but references to documents. In this way, if a document is presented in more than one group, the document itself is not multiplied for each containing group, but the single instance is referred by links from each group entry.

Observing the documents in the Internal Documents Database can be done in three views:

The main dialog is Entry Manager with some additional functionality buttons. The manager keeps records of all documents saved in the system. The documents are contained in system of document groups which are arranged in trees, similar to the directory structure. On the top of each document groups hierarchy there stands a node, which represents thecorpus container. Thus the topmost level of the hierarchy of the Internal Documents database consists of corpora nodes only. From these nodes, the hierarchies of groups begin.

Each corpus contains one system reserved group, named SYSTEM. It contains documents for special purposes in the system. This group contains the following system protected sub-groups:

None of the above groups can .be deleted or renamed by the user.

Here follows one example picture of the Document Manager window:

The By Groups view of the manager window consists of two main parts:

  1. The panel on the left. It contains a tree representation of the documents hierarchy: Root, SYSTEM, Queries, etc. When the user selects a node in this tree, the content of the corresponding group or corpus is loaded in the component on the right side.
  2. Current group monitor. This is the panel situated on the right side of the window. It is a list with the content of the currently selected group in the tree. The list components, which are in blue color, are sub-groups. The other ones are the entries included in this group. They are colored in black or red, depending on whether they are valid or not, according to their DTDs. The user can sort all the entries in a group by clicking on the Name column of the table header. It is possible to rearrange the entries in a group by simply using drag-and-drop technique, i.e. pressing a document and moving upwards or downwords until the desired position is reached.

There are seven buttons which can be used for manipulation of the content of the current group:

Navigation in the group structure can be made also in the panel on the right. When the user wants to see the content of a certain sub-group of the current group, s/he just has to perform a double click on the desired sub-group name. This will change the current group to the new one. This represents the movement from a group to a sub-group. The movement in the other direction is also possible. For each document group (excluding the Root), a special sub-group is included, named: ". .". By performing a double click on it, similarly to most file systems, the current group is changed to its parent one.

The Document Manager also provides two other views of the internal documents:

From now on, these two view will be described together as they share many common features.

The content of the tables in these views contain the following information about the documents:

The documents in the table can be manipulated by using the right mouse button. Having selected a document or a set of documents and performed a right-mouse click, the following functions menu appears:

Here is one example view of all internal documents from corpus Root in CLaRK:

Delete

By choosing this item, the user deletes document(s), saved in the internal document database of the system. A Document Manager window is opened on the screen.

The user has to point out to a document (or a set of documents) and click the Remove button. Then a confirmation dialog appears. If the user clicks on the Yes button, the chosen document(s)  is(are) permanently deleted from the database. If the user clicks on the No button the document(s) is(are) not deleted.

Similarly to the "Open" function, the user can choose documents in two modes: from all documents or from a certain group. When documents are removed from the list of all documents, the groups they belong to are also updated.

The user can also delete a document in the manager by performing a double click on a certain document name either in the list of all documents or in the list of the current group.

Close

A default shortcut Ctrl+F4

By choosing this item, the user closes the current document and all views of it and removes it from the memory.

If this is the only view of the current document and the document has been edited, then the user is asked whether he/she wants to save the changes.

When the view is closed, if there is at least one more view, loaded in the system, the previous active view becomes a current view. If there is no more documents, the system blank view appears.


Import XML

An icon on the toolbar

By choosing this item, the user loads a text file containing an XML document within the system. A standard dialog for choosing a file appears. The user has to specify the name of the file to load and its character encoding in Files of type: choice box. The possible encodings for files are: ASCII, UNICODE (UTF-8), UNICODE (UTF-16BE) or UNICODE (UTF-16LE). Then the user is asked to choose a DTD from the DTD database of the system. If the document contains a DTD, the user is asked which one to be used during parsing/validation.

Remark: If a document is opened in ASCII format (and it is sure it is an ASCII file) and in the system it contains different symbols from the expected ones, the possible problems are two:

  1. Inappropriate system font (for details see Options/Fonts);
  2. Inappropriate character encoding converter from ASCII to Unicode (for details see Options/Encoding Correction).

The system tries to parse the document. If the document is well-formed, then it is parsed into the internal representation. The system creates a view of the document, validates the document and if the document is not valid with respect to the chosen DTD, a list of errors is printed in the error window. A description of all validation errors can be found in Validation error messages section.

If the document is not well-formed, then the system reports an error. A detailed description of all parsing errors can be found in Parse error messages section. The errors of this kind have to be repaired within an external to the system editor. The error message reported by CLaRK system can help the user to find the error in the document.

ReImport

A default shortcut Ctrl+R

When the user tries to load a document, which is not well-formed, an error message is reported by the CLaRK system and the user has to edit the document outside the CLaRK system. Then he/she would like to load the same document. In order not to go throughout the whole process of choosing the file and so on, the user can use ReImport item to load the last chosen document.

The system tries to parse the document. If the document is well-formed, it is parsed into the internal representation. The system creates a view of the document, validates the document and if the document is not valid with respect to the chosen DTD, a list of errors is printed in the error window. A description of all validation errors can be found in Validation error messages section.

If the document is not well-formed, then the system reports an error. A detailed description of all parsing errors can be found in Parse error messages section. The errors of this kind have to be repaired with an editor outside the system. The error message reported by CLaRK system can help the user to find the error in the document.

Export XML

An icon on the toolbar

By choosing this item, the user can save the current document into a text file outside the system. A standard dialog for choosing a file appears. The user has to specify the name of the file which will contain the document and the character encoding of the exported text in Files of type: choice box. The possible encodings for files are: ASCII, UNICODE (UTF-8), UNICODE (UTF-16BE) or UNICODE (UTF-16LE). If the files already exist the user is asked whether he/she wants to overwrite it.

Remark: If a document is exported in ASCII format but the content of the output file is not comprehensible for other programs or even for the CLaRK System, then the problem can be in an inappropriate character encoding converter from Unicode to ASCII (for details see Options/Encoding Correction).

The text in the file can be formatted according to the layout specified for the DTD of the document or to the current view's layout. These settings can be specified in section Export Options.


Export Options

By choosing this item, the user can specify the information to be added in the external file.

Here is a screen shot of the dialog :

The dialog contains the following sections:

Layout source options

Export options


Recent ...

This option gives a quick access to documents which were used recently in the system. The system keeps track of up to seven documents back. By choosing an item here, a document (if it is still available) is immediately opened in the editor. The Recent ... section is split into two sections:

  1. Internal Documents

    It stores the names of the last seven documents which have been opened from the Internal Documents database in the system editor.

  2. External XML

    It stores the names of the last seven documents which have been imported from external XML files in the system editor.


Import RTF

By choosing this item, the user loads a RTF file within the system. A standard dialog for choosing a file appears. The user is asked to point to the RTF file to load. The expected file encoding is ASCII as it is specified in the RTF specification. The result from importing an RTF file is an XML document whose structure follows the TEI.2 DTD. During importing the user is asked to point to a DTD name where the TEI.2 DTD is stored. If there is no such DTD available, any other DTD can be selected and the result document will not be valid (which is not a problem).

RTF to XML Conversion

Not all the data from an RTF document is detected and transferred into XML. From the structures which are not recognized in the RTF file only the text content is taken. The types of data for which the system is aware are: heading information (title, author, keywords, creation/last modification date and time), structural information (headers, paragraphs, sections) and text layout information (bold, italics, underlined). Here follows the correspondence table from RTF to XML (TEI.2).

RTF Heading Data

XML(TEI.2) Corresponding Data

title TEI.2 > teiHeader > fileDesc > titleStmt > title
author TEI.2 > teiHeader > fileDesc > titleStmt > author
operator TEI.2 > teiHeader > fileDesc > titleStmt > respStmt > name
company TEI.2 > teiHeader > fileDesc > publicationStmt > publisher
category TEI.2 > teiHeader > encodingDesc > classDecl > taxonomy > category
keywords TEI.2 > teiHeader > profileDesc > textClass > keywords > term
creation date/time TEI.2 > teiHeader > profileDesc > creation > date / time
words count TEI.2 > teiHeader > fileDesc > sourceDesc > bibl > extent > XXX words
characters count TEI.2 > teiHeader > fileDesc > sourceDesc > bibl > extent > XXX characters
characters count incl. whitespaces TEI.2 > teiHeader > fileDesc > sourceDesc > bibl > extent > XXX characters with ws.
Structure & Layout Data XML Tags
paragraph <p> ... </p>
section <div> ... </div>
header <head> ... </head>
footer <trailer> ... </trailer>
bold <hi rend="Bold"> ... </hi>
italics <hi rend="Italics"> ... </hi>
underlined

<hi rend="Underlined"> ... </hi>

Remark: The notation in the table above: "xxx > yyy > zzz" stands for the following XML markup: "<xxx><yyy><zzz></zzz></yyy></xxx>"

The system supports Unicode encoded RTF documents as well as 23 different ASCII text encodings. If no ASCII encoding is detected, the system defaults to US Codepage (OEM-437).


Import from URL

By choosing this item, the user can load an XML document from an URL address. The user should write: URL address, file encoding: ASCII, UNICODE (UTF-8), UNICODE (UTF-16BE) or UNICODE (UTF-16LE). Then the user is asked to choose a DTD from the DTD database of the system. If the document contains a DTD, this DTD is ignored during the parsing.

Remark: If a document is opened in ASCII format (and it is sure it is an ASCII file) and in the system it contains different symbols from the expected ones, the possible problems are two:

  1. Inappropriate system font (for details see Options/Fonts);
  2. Inappropriate character encoding converter from ASCII to Unicode (for details see Options/Encoding Correction).

The system tries to parse the document. If the document is well-formed, then it is parsed into the internal representation. The system creates a view of the document, validates the document and if the document is not valid with respect to the chosen DTD, a list of errors is printed in the error window. A description of all validation errors can be found in Validation error messages section.

If the document is not well-formed, then the system reports an error. A detailed description of all parsing errors can be found in Parse error messages section. The errors of this kind have to be repaired with an editor outside the system. The error message reported by CLaRK system can help the user to find the error in the document.


Here is a screen shot of the dialog :


Import Text

This item allows the user to import pure text documents (without XML markup) in the system. The input documents can be encoded in ASCII or Unicode. The text from the input file is represented as one big text node. For compatibility, the CLaRK System puts an auxiliary tag (textdata) as root of the document and the text node is its only child. This auxiliary tag has an attribute source which keeps information about the location of the source file for this text. Having chosen this item, the user is asked to point to a DTD for the new document.

Export Text

This item allows the user to export the text content of XML document as pure text. The text is serialized in a file without any preprocessing like the substitution of special control symbols ('<', '>', '&', etc.) with entities and others. Only the text nodes are printed in the order they appear in the document. All other data is ignored. The encoding of the text data can be either ASCII or Unicode.


Multi-Import

This tool is used to perform a multiple Import XML operations, i.e. to import XML documents from external files into the internal document database of the system. The documents importing is done without opening them in the system editor. The imported documents are automatically saved in a corpus of the internal database and they are included (optionally) in a certain group.

Here follows a view of the Multi-Import Manager window:

The manager dialog window contains a list of all documents to be imported (initially it is empty) and some other options controlling the document processing. The components of the dialog are:

If a document is not well-formed, then the system reports an error. A detailed description of all parsing errors can be found in Parse error messages section. The errors of this kind have to be repaired with an editor outside the system. The error message reported by CLaRK system can help the user to find the error in the document.

Multi-Export

This item allows the user to export a set of internal documents: whole group or/and single documents. The user selects an output directory and encoding for all selected documents. Here is a screen-shot of the Multi-Export Manager window:

The manager window consists of:

Document Selector

The Document Selector is an universal component which is used in almost all system tools, it can work with more than one document. The selector provides the possibility for the user to point to the internal documents a particular tool will be applied to. It consists of two sub-components: a selection list and a selecting dialog window. The selection list shows the currently selected documents. Initially this list is empty. Here follows a picture of the selection list. Usually it is embedded in another dialog window.

Three operations can be applied to this list: adding new list entries, removing selected list entries, clearing the whole list. These operations can be applied by using the buttons on the right:


Exit

By choosing this item, the user closes all opened files and exits the system. If there are unsaved documents, the user is asked whether to save the changes or not.