Re: Advanced Find and Replace Calls

[Deborah Snavely <dsnavely@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ken, 

I use moderately complex search-and-replace commands 
fairly frequently. However, for your situation, 
all I'd do is search for 		" and "
with replace with		", and "

Within FrameMaker, I don't believe you can automate
your fix completely. I generally do this sort of hunting with 
one hand on the mouse and the other on the Return/Enter key...
if I want to skip a hit, I press return (I mean enter), and if I want 
to change it, I click Change & Find. It goes extremely fast in 
my experience, but there's just no substitute for a human mind,
yet. I've done several hundred pages this way in maybe an hour.

(For Mac/Frame users, Casady & Greene makes the only 
grammar-checker software that's ever passed my extreme
test: the ability to re-word correctly an incorrectly written
compound sentence in the subjunctive mood.)

Good luck!

Deborah Snavely, Senior Technical Writer, Aurigin Systems, Inc.




*************************************************
Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2000 09:54:26 -0400
From: "Woodard, Ken" <KWoodard@wabtec.com>
Subject: Advanced Find and Replace Calls

BACKGROUND:	One of our clients requires the use of serial commas (i.e.
cat, 
dog, and monkey vs. cat, dog and monkey). Unfortunately, they neglected to 
inform us of this preference prior to our writing of their manuals.

PROBLEM:	I have attempted to use the wildcards (|, ^ and *) to
construct a 
find and replace line that would search for and replace instances where the 
serial comma is missing, but alas the find and replace does not spot the 
missing instances. (No matter how hard I try, I cannot train my eye to pick 
up "missing" serial commas, and with several hundred instances per manual - 
I don't want to have to do this manually anyway).

I can locate instances of and not preceded by commas, but this also 
includes instances where and is used as a simple conjunction. What I really 
need is a call that will locate instances where "and" follows a word that 
is preceded by a comma (something like ",|[^,] and", although I cannot get 
that one to work).

QUESTION:	Have any of you folks had greater experience with such
"compound" 
find and replace calls? Any hints?

==================
Kenneth Woodard
Technical Writer
WABCO Transit Group
Kwoodard@wabtec.com
Phone: 864.433.6427
Fax: 864.433.0176


** To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@omsys.com **
** with "unsubscribe framers" (no quotes) in the body.   **