Converting the Region Type

The Region Type field in the Properties window displays information about the type of region Stylus Studio inferred when the file was first read. Its value is either Fixed-width, Line-oriented, or No-output.

Regions with CR/LF control characters are interpreted as line-oriented regions. There might be occasions, however, when you want to change the region type from line-oriented to fixed-width, or vice versa. This section describes the tools you can use to change a region from one type to another.

Consider the following file fixed-width file:

Make        Model    Year    Mileage 
BMW         R1150RS  2004    14274   
Kawasaki    GPz1100  1996    60234   
Ducati      ST2      1997    24000   
MotoGuzzi   LeMans   2001    12393   
BMW         R1150R   2002    17439   
Ducati      Monster  2000    15682   
Aprilia     Futura   2001    17320  

It is a simple .txt file with fields (Make, Model, and so on) that have been created using spaces. Each new row was created using the Enter key in the text editor, resulting in CR/LF control characters at the end of each line that cause Stylus Studio to interpret the file as a single line-oriented region, like this:

For display purposes, we can remove the spaces Stylus Studio has inserted for readability (the cells with the light blue shading) by clicking the Align Fields ( ) button. This results in a display that resembles the source (Figure 164), but Stylus Studio still considers the region to be line-oriented.

When you convert a line-oriented region to a fixed-width region, Stylus Studio removes spaces it added for readability and depicts only the spaces in the original input file used to create the fields and the field values themselves, as show in Figure 165.

By default, Stylus Studio displays fixed-width files using an 80-character row. This accounts for the input files appearance when it is first displayed as a fixed-width file - if you scan the document, you can see that all of the file's original information, including the CR/LF control characters has been retained, but that the formatting differs - the original input file had eight rows; now it has four rows of 80 characters.

How to Convert a Region Type

To convert a region type:
1. Place the cursor anywhere in the region you want to change.
2. Click the Convert to Fixed-Width Region ( ) or Convert to Line-Oriented Region ( ) button. These actions are also accessible from the CustomXMLConversion menu and the shortcut menu in the Custom XML Conversion Editor.
 
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