Processing Rules Reference

This section provides a detailed description of the operation and effect of each rule. Look here and here for a summary of how to use the rules on a record or a whole table.

The process rules of Mini-Edit are used to systematically control how records are tested, modified, and changed in order to perfect them. Indiscriminate use of this section of the tool can damage your records, as not all rules are compatible with each other or harmless (as you might expect, each SDO has different needs and conventions, and as a result some rules conflict with each other). As a rule the default setting of the rules will enable only those rules which do no possible harm.

When in doubt, set the file to be read-only and then run the rule on the table or record. A summary of what is found (without changing any records) will be presented for your consideration. If this is what you wanted to do, then re-run the rule with the file in read-write mode. This is a very effective way to test the waters before making changes. When changing one record at a time, the undo button is also helpful.

Each process rule is listed in this section along with its behavior, its default setting, and where it is located in the tree of rules.

The text string listed after the position (if present) is the programmatic keyword for this rule, a unique phrase used to invoke the rule when using remote automation. [Aside: Remotely running Mini-Edit from other applications is a subject of future development at this time and will be covered in the (yet to be developed) programmers guide.]

NOTE: The rules can also be downloaded from the web is a Word document format here.

The structure of the Processing Rules Reference