SIMPOL Documentation

Searches for a string in the active document.

The Find dialog box contains the following input boxes:

The direction of the search can be "up" or "down". It can be changed using the appropriate radio buttons.

There is also the button "Mark All". If this is pressed, a bookmark will be added to each line that contains the search string.

Searches for a string in multiple files. This is a very powerful search tool that can find the search string in multiple files and folders.

The Find in Files dialog contains the following input boxes:

The Find in Files dialog box also contains the following check boxes:

This is only active if the active document is a SIMPOL server page (smz). It inserts a new empty code block in the document before the line with the caret. A code block is a place to write SIMPOL language in a SIMPOL server page; see Example 4.5, “Code block limits”.

Opens a dialog box for the user to add parameters. These parameters will be passed to the "main" function when we execute a SIMPOL file using the Execute File option. The parameters are separated by one or more whitespaces. If a parameter contains whitespaces, it should come between a pair of double or single quotes.

Example:

function main prototype: main(string s, string s2)
command line: "hi  bye" 123
          

This is only available if there is an active project open. It opens a dialog box where there are five options to generate documentation from the active project. The options are as follows:

Project summary in TEXT format

Creates a text document briefely describing the active project. It contains the project file paths, the project settings and the project functions and types prototypes.

Project summary in HTML format

Same as the first option but in HTML format.

Project description in XML format

Creates a XML document with all the active project information.

Project library information in HTML format

Creates a HTML document describing the functions and types that belong to the active project.

SIMPOL library information in HTML format

Creates a HTML document describing the functions and types that belong to the SIMPOL internal library.

Opens a dialog box to generate documentation for multiple projects. There are two entries in the dialog box. One to enter an input folder. The projects report process will make a report per each project found in this folder or in any subfolders within the input folder. The second entry is the output folder. This is the place where the process will leave all the reports. All the reports are HTML files and an "index.html" file is created with the report list. A report for the SIMPOL internal library is also created. A "logfile.txt" is created with the incidences that happen in the process. Any report contains all the function and type information of each project. The powerful issue is that the process creates a HTML link in every library, function, type, method, property, parameter, tag, etc., so from any report we can go to another report were the description is located. The process also adds the code lines just above a function or type declaration that start with a double slash mark ("//" SIMPOL comment mark).

In the example below, the file "MyFile.sma" contains these two functions:

// This function returns a string
// The string is "Hello"
function f1()
end "Hello"

// This function returns a string
// The string is "Bye"
function f2()
end "Bye"
           

In the documentation generated for the function f1 we will find this piece of text: 'This function returns a string. The string is "Hello" '.

And in the documentation generated for f2 we will find the equivalent piece of text: 'This function returns a string. The string is "Bye" '.

Opens a dialog box that allows the user to open a file as binary. This means that a document will be created with the data of the file selected. This document contains two lines for each 32 bytes read in the file. The first line shows the value of each byte in hexadecimal format, and the second shows the ASCII translation of each byte. The address of the byte in the file is shown on the left side of the first line, so it is easy to follow the binary representation.

The document created will have a "bin" file extension and the appropiate color coding syntax. This makes it very easy to read the document.

The searching function becomes quite a powerful tool in the binary document. If the "Find" menu option is pressed, a modified Find dialog box opens to search the information in this type of document.

This dialog box has a "Find what" entry to enter the search text. Any text entered will be translated into ASCII, and searched for in the document. There is a "Unicode" checkbox which, when checked, will instruct the application to translate the search text into unicode before searching the document, i.e. it will allow two bytes per character rather than one. In such a case, the rightmost byte is zero. There is also a "Match case" checkbox. If this is checked, the search will only return results where the case exactly matches that of the search text. Users can also use regular expressions to find information in the binary file by checking the "Regular expression" checkbox.