LINE REPLACEMENT CHARACTERS may be entered by keyboard or clipboard as normal characters or as ASCII character codes. Up to 125 pairs of line replacement strings may be defined. Each string is limited to 64 characters. Defined pairs are displayed in a scrollable list.
Unlike regular replacement strings, line replacement strings operate within a single line, which is defined as characters preceding (but not including) a carriage return character. Matches cannot span lines.
Find What strings can be specified as being located at the beginning or end of a line or anywhere within a line. Change To strings can affect the whole line (replacing it, removing it, or emptying it) or just the found string (replacing it).
To remove occurrences of the Find What string, leave the Change To string blank. If there are more characters in the Find string than in the Change string, characters will be removed from the document being processed; fewer characters in the Find string than in the Change string will cause characters to be inserted.
To insert the Change To string at the beginning or the end of each line, specify a Change To string, leave the Find What string blank, and set the Find Where pop-up menu to At Beginning or At End. In this case, no matching is done, the string is simply inserted.
When the Find Where pop-up menu is set to At Beginning or At End the any character sequence wildcard (^@) doesn’t require a character to the left of the wildcard when matching the beginning of the lines or a character to the right of the wildcard when matching the end of the lines.
Click the New button to insert a new replacement set. The set is inserted at the location shown by the arrow to the right of the scrolling list. Drag the arrow to change the insertion point.
Active strings (those actually used during processing) are shown in black. Inactive strings (ignored during processing) are drawn in gray. Inactive strings can be used for simple notation or to turn off sets without deleting them from the list. Use the Enable and Disable buttons to make selected strings active or inactive.
Double-click a replacement string in the scrollable list to insert it into the edit text fields. Change the order of replacement by option-dragging a string up or down the list. The current destination of an item being dragged is indicated by two triangles on either side of the list. Click and drag the divider line between the text columns to change the column widths.
A checkbox is shown to the left of each replacement set in the list. Replacement strings that ignore case when comparing the current Find What string to existing text display a checkmark in that set’s checkbox. Click a checkbox to quickly toggle ignoring of case for a replacement string.
Use the tab key to select a text entry field or the scrollable list. If the scrollable list is outlined by a black rectangle, the up and down arrow keys may be used to highlight a replacement string entry.
Select an item from the ASCII pop-up menu to insert ASCII codes for wildcards and characters that are difficult to type. Select the Show Chart… item to open a window containing a character table that can be used to locate and insert specific characters into the current edit text field.
Carriage returns cannot be used as part of the Find What string, though they can be used in the Change To string.
Replacement sets can be copied and pasted to and from the clipboard. Highlighted sets are copied to the clipboard as text in the order of Find What string, tab character, Change To string, carriage return. This format is repeated for each replacement set so that copying ten replacement sets places ten lines of text onto the clipboard.
Line Replacement sets are pasted into the list at the position of the blinking insertion point; highlighted sets are removed prior to the paste. Pasting will try to use whatever text is on the clipboard, using tabs to distinguish between Find What and Change To strings and carriage returns to distinguish sets.
Cutting and then pasting the sets to a new location is the quickest way to reposition several sets within the list. Line Replacement sets can also be cut or copied to the clipboard and pasted into the Replacements list to easily transfer large numbers of sets.
