So hi. I'm an Eclipse user learning Phoenix Theory. This question's about the metadictionary, though.
I sort of maybe half understand the metadictionary language. Okay, half...maybe 25%...somewhere in there :-) Just enough to get me in trouble.
So I like how the {.?} entry lets you do things like, uh, put in like an, um, word with the commas if needed. Um, but it leaves them out when necessary, say at the beginning of a sentence. Great, right?. Great, right?
However, I have been trying to make this work with other punctuation not included in the metadictionary entry. Like ellipses and dashes. When I want to transcribe the sentence "Um..." it comes out "Um,..."
Okay, so the entry is {,?}={/</"[.][;][?][:][-][,][],/></|-/?CPC} and so that makes sense, no ellipsis in there.
But when I tried just changing the entry to {,?}={/</"[.][;][?][:][-][,][...][],/></|-/?CPC}, it just had no effect whatsoever.
So,
1) You don't have to restart Eclipse or anything for metadictionary changes to "go live", do you?
2) I may just not understand the syntax enough to help. My thinking is if it works for the bracketed punctuation in the entry, I should just need to add another bracketed entry for whatever I'd like soft punctuation to work with...ellipses, dashes, etc. On the other hand, I can't figure out how this works for ENDING punctuation as well as BEGINNING. If I'm reading the code right, basically it's saying "look at the character to the left. If it's a period or a semicolon or a question mark or a colon or a hypen or a comma, do nothing; if it's a space, add a comma. The part after that gets a little hazy; clearly it capitalizes the next entry, and the CPC tells it that it's comma punctuation—what difference that makes to anything is beyond me. But I don't see anything in the entry telling Eclipse what to do AFTER it inserts the word. Yet, it works, so who am I to judge?
3) On the other hand, the ellipsis ends with a period, so why wouldn't the code work with an ellipsis as is? After a period, it doesn't put a comma, so why would it be different just because two more periods happen to be before the period?
So you guys that write your own metadictionary entries, please...I beg you...help me out!!
Chris
Dave: Isn't this easier: {^}{~}...
Mike
Chris, take the stroke that you use to write the ellipses and define it as {...}
go into the metadictionary and add:
{...}={/<^^^[,;-:?~]/"~.../?TPC} this allow the ellipses stroke to delete the comma if one is there.
Chris
I'd say you are doing very well at absorbing the metadictionary! Wow! Here's some info for you: If you open up the Eclipse Help, and look in the Index for this topic: Metadictionary Syntax and Codes, you will find a very lengthy explanation for all the little characters in the line of code. If for some reason you can't get Help to open, post here and I'll try and cut and paste the info, or can send it to you via email, your choice. It's very informative!
Keep that mind churning!
HTH,
.... unless Support tells you to.....at least that's what we've been told for years and years.
Aw heck, Amanda, I ain't scareda no metadictionary...(since after all, I can always change it back when everything goes haywire)...
And Jan, thanks for the tip, but the little I know I learned from reading and rereading that very help file. It's just too much for my brain to process I think.
It'd help if THIS PARTICULAR entry was described, I think, but no such luck.
Any metadictionary experts out there? I know you're there; I've seen your other posts.