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PRAGMA PROGRAM REFERENCE MANUAL
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All Operation

Expand All      ADDENDUM
MERGE MRG Standard Interactive-only Verb General Vocabulary Operation
Target =

Merges two vocabularies and combines them into one.
The current vocabulary is the DESTINATION. Items from the SOURCE will be
merged into the destination. Merge lets you first choose the process of sel-
ecting the items you desire to bring over from the source to the destination.
Then you must choose the mode for handling duplicate names. Pressing <RETURN/ENTER>
selects automatic renaming mode, where all duplicates are kept distinct.

MERGE
Enter the name of the source vocabulary: PATHFILENAME

PATHFILENAME is the name of the source, and may be up to 64 characters long,
and may include drive and/or path specifiers, and MUST include a file exten-
sion, most probably .PFM, as none is assumed.

SEE ALSO: SELECTIVE SAVE

Merge first asks for the name of the source vocabulary. The current vocabulary is considered the destination, and items from the source will be merged into the destination. The name of the source may be up to 64 characters long, and may include drive and/or path specifiers, and MUST include a file extension, most probably .PFM, as none is assumed. The complete file name must be entered. If you want to cancel MERGE at this point simply rub out the whole line (you can use to do this) and press .

Merge then initializes the two files, and this may take a moment.

Merge then asks you to choose the marking mode. Marking is the process of selecting which items you desire to bring over to the destination from the source in the merge. You may cause merge to automatically select all items in the source by pressing . Otherwise, you may press , and select individual items, in a tree, similar to the marking method used in SELECTIVE SAVE. This process DOES NOT actually selective save anything in the source; it ONLY marks items to be brought over to the destination by the merge process. The source vocabulary MUST be written to in order to accomplish this, but this marking will NOT cause any items to be discarded in the source.

If you choose to mark individual items, you are presented with a count of items currently marked, a count of unmarked items, the possibility to LV, LF, or LN, and you may of course type the name of an item (tree) to mark, or press to end the marking phase. The listings (LV, LF, LN) may all be performed on either the source or the destination. When you choose these selections, you may press to cause the listing to be performed on the destination vocab, or to list in the source.

After marking is complete, you are asked to confirm the merge by pressing to continue, to quit without merging, or any other key to continue individually marking.

After confirming the merge, you are asked to choose the mode for handling duplicate names. You may press to choose automatic renaming mode. This causes ALL duplicate named items to be kept distinct, by adding "!" characters to the beginning of the source name, as necessary, until a unique name is found. This method should be used when combining two different systems, to avoid any problems. It is the safest route.

You may also press to choose automatic substitution for the source. This mode is usually used when updating an end user vocabulary to add new features or bug fixes. In this mode, when a duplicate is found, and IF this item is of the same type in both source and destination, the destination item is overwritten with the source item. If the items are NOT the same type, merge defaults to manual handling mode for this item (described next). In order for items of duplicate name to be considered as of the same type, in the case of verbs, it is also mandatory that they use the same number of objects.

You may also press to choose manual handling mode. In this case, each and every duplicate item must be manually resolved in one of four ways.

The first way is to choose automatic renaming for this single item by pressing . Manual handling resumes with subsequent items.

The second way is to choose automatic overwrite of destination with the source (updating method) by pressing .

The third method is to cause this source item to be skipped over entirely, preserving the destination as it is, and causing all source items using this item to instead refer to the destination item.

The forth method is to choose manual renaming of this source item by pressing .

In all cases, the duplicate name display shows you the duplicate item name, and its type in both the source and the destination. If the two items are not of the same type, the "skip the source" and "overwrite the destination" options are NOT available.

Merge processes vocabulary ONLY. Included in the set of vocabulary are file definitions, verb definitions, and nouns complete with value. Specifically excluded from this set are files and their records. When merging two different applications, is may sometimes be necessary to merge the files manually. This may require renaming the .PFM file at the operating system level, and ALTERing the corresponding file definition shortname to agree.

After all duplicate names are resolved, which occurs during the process of creating all new names in the destination, merge proceeds to the next phase. This is to fixup all definition pointers in the items brought over from the source. When this phase begins, no more interaction is required.

 
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