External Format configuration request

[Stumpii]

I am using an External Format program to process CSV files that do not follow the 'typical' matrix format with first line header. My external tool processes the files together and converts them to a format that can be compared by BC, rather than showing the results in a separate window.

The external tool has a number of options (what to include, what to exclude, etc.) which would be useful for the user to access. There is no way for the user to access these options, so I have configured the tool to show the options if it is run with no command line arguments. This requires that the user know where the program is and that there is such a feature.

What I would like to request is an additional box and button on the File Formats popup (the one where you specify the tool command line arguments). The new box can be 'Tool configuration' and the button can be 'Configure Tool'. Pressing the Configure Tool would run the command line set up by the developer, allowing the user to configure settings within the tool.

The attached email shows what I mean.

Steve

[Aaron]

Hello,

With your external conversion using the External Format, are you then calling back to display the files within BC? That isn't the intended use of this format type: an External Format is meant to be called and then viewed externally.

To view internally, I'd recommend using a new Table Format, and then add the conversion to the Conversion tab. The Conversion tab would pass the source (%s) file to the command line you provide and then expects a target text file (%t) back. The Data Compare then opens and displays the %t file.

This area of the application also does not have the dialog prompt you request. For this idea, when would you hope to expose this information to the user? When running the conversion each time on files or only initially from this dialog?
What I would recommend instead is to provide a set of File Formats (a single .bcpkg can hold multiple defined Formats). Each Format would then be titled with the appropriate configuration that it uses. The Topmost format when imported is the default used, while the other formats can be picked manually from the File Formats dropdown on the toolbar/statusbar or the Session Settings.

[Stumpii]

Thanks for the quick feedback.

The reason that I switched to using the external format is because the external tool requires both files to be processed together to determine changes and most importantly filter out junk (deleted data). With the internal conversion, the files are processed individually, so the converter can have no knowledge of the contents of the other file.

My intent when writing the external format tool was to bring up a GUI with a report or similar showing the differences, however I realised that once the program had matched and filtered the data, the report I wanted was just a simple text compare and BC does that nicely! It seemed obvious then to store the output from my compare to text and have BC compare it, instead of writing my own text compare viewer.

For the configuration feature, here is a better (made up) example:
Imagine that I wrote a new External Format for .wav (audio) files. I write the app, configure the Format, package it as a bcpkg. My app is pretty slick, there are a bunch of options for stuff. When the user runs a full compare, I allow the user to tweak the default options. These will be default when running the quick or full compare. If the user later installs the package on a friends computer, or finds that an option is not correct, there is no way to access the settings without running another full compare. It would be nice if there was a button on the File Format page to run a program (i.e. the external tool with no arguments) which could show the options.

Hope that makes more sense.

Thanks,

Steve