Notebook file build processing

The other output file type that these programs produce is the note output file.  The note file is a grouping of notes that are ID coded together and segregated by date and time.  The program look at the ID coding client and task and expand them into a file name.  The subtask portion of the ID coding is used to group text blocks together in the file to produce a grouped set of notes.   Only text blocks which are encoded with ’n’ or ’x’ end up in the note file. 

Let’s review an example using the Wednesday 1-4 file…

The first note that is coded with an ’n’ or a ‘x’ is as follows…

The program first starts with the portion of the ID code to the left side of the dash.  In this case, the code is 61.  The code is expanded into a file name with the format of ‘pcctttt’ where ‘p’ is a constant, ‘cc’ is the client number, and ‘tttt’ is the task number.  Therefore, 61 translates into p06001 as a file name. 

Within that file, the portion of the ID code to the right hand side of the dash takes over.  If this is the first entry into the output note file for that day, a date marker line is added in. 

What happens next depends on if there is a task ID file or not.  In either case, the program decodes the value to the right of the dash into a four character subtask code.  So, in this situation, the ‘2’ to the right of the 61-2 becomes 0002.  If there is not task ID file, the process stops right there.  If there IS a task ID file, the program attempts to look up a subtask with right hand most characters of ‘0002’ within the 61 portion of the file.  If a match is made, the next line of the note output file will be taken from the info in the task ID file.  If not, the program will formulate it’s own note header line.

Let’s assumes that there is a task ID file.  If there is a ‘2’ entry (or ‘0002’ entry) under the 61 section of the file, it will pick up the info from that line and put it into the note file.   If there is a ‘2’ entry under the 61 section and it is entitled ‘project management’, the resulting note line will look like this…

If there is no task ID file, the lookup doesn’t take place and the program just assumes that the first line of the first text block for that task ID is the description.  The output note files looks like this…

As you can see, the description isn’t nearly as good.  The program will work but what you get out of it won’t look as nice.  For the rest of this example, we’ll assume that you have a task ID file. 

After formulating or looking up the main description line, the program then takes the note text block and adds it into the note file as follows….

Note that the beginning time of the block is tacked onto the right of the first line.

Later in the file, there is a second block that matches up with the block that we just worked.  Because the full descriptions match, it will be tacked onto the back of the first block like this…

Let’s assume that later in the file a text block with a task ID of 61-4 is encountered. 

If we assume that there is a #0004 entry in the 61 section of the task ID file and that it’s title is ‘time management’, the output would look like this…

Because the items to the left hand side of the task ID expand into the same file as 61-2 (file name p06001), it goes in the same file but the subtask is different so it goes under a different heading.

Going back to the example, the next block looks like this…

The task ID of 68-5047 indicates that it will go into a file named p06008 under subtask 5047 (or a subtask which has right most characters of 5047.  This second file will look like this after this entry is processed…

If, however, there was an entry in the task file under section 68 that had a task ID of 45047, the resulting output note entry would have been…

The program processes text block after text block and continues to build the output files in the order that the text blocks are processed which is by start time.  If two files are fed into the processor, the program will only build one note file but demarcate the different days with a date line. 

Lets look at two different files, one fro 1-4 and a second from 1-5, which both have 61-2 data in them. 

The resulting p06001 file would look like this..

In the end, it’s best to play with the examples and then try some small stuff on your own to see how this all works.  Also, don’t be afraid to alter the example data and see how your changes affect the output of the programs.