If you're interested, you can go back and check out my home page or my Pilot page. If not, read on ...

Introduction

The Pilot uses proportionally spaced fonts. This makes it quite difficult to lay out tabular data for display in MemoPad and Doc.

MakeTab is a 32-bit PC program that knows how wide all of the characters in the Pilot's fonts are. It takes column-based data and formats it so that it will look correct when viewed on the Pilot.

The output file can be cut and pasted into a MemoPad entry via the Pilot Desktop. Alternatively, MakeTab can be asked to run MakeDoc over its output to generate a Doc file that can be installed via InstApp.

You can download a copy of MakeTab here. The archive includes the program, plus this document.

This is version 1.01 of MakeTab. It fixes a minor bug in the code that I noticed while looking into a problem someone was having converting a file. I've also added some checking to see that the delimiter seems to be specified correctly, and display a message if not, telling the user the correct way to specify what it is. Version 1.0 generates wide documents, since Doc now handles them, Thanks to Rick Razzano for letting me know about this change to Doc.

Another major change in this version is that if you don't specify the width of a column, it is calculated for you. Hence, you only need to specify the widths if you specifically want to space the columns out.

How to Run MakeTab

The general form of the command line is

	maketab [<col width> ...] [-c] [-d<delimiter>] [-m"Doc title"]

            <data file>

By default, the correct column widths are calculated automatically. However, you can specify the widths by hand, if you specify the -c option.

The "-d" option allows you to specify the inter-column delimiter. By default this is a TAB.

If you specify '-m"Document title"' then the output from MakeTab is run through MakeDoc to produce a Doc-ready PDB file. The name of the PDB file is the same as the original input file with a ".pdb" extension.

Note that MakeTab assumes makedoc is called precisely that. If you've downloaded, say, makedoc 7, then by default the executable is called "makedoc7.exe", so you'll have to rename it so that MakeTab can find it.

Some Examples

The following command would take a file called "test.tab" (containing columns of data separated by TABs) and produce an output file called "test.out", containing three columns 38, 18 and 58 pixels wide, respectively ...

	maketab 38 18 58 test.tab

If, on the other hand, the columns were separated by commas, you would use the following command ...

	maketab -d, 38 18 58 test.tab

Finally, if we wanted to make a Doc document entitled "Test Data" then we would use the command ...

	maketab -d, 38 18 58 -m"Test Data" test.tab

Now ... The Legal Stuff

MakeTab is Copyright © 1997 by Harry Ohlsen.

You are free to use it for any purpose you see fit, and you are welcome to distribute it to anyone you like, so long as you include this information.

I cannot be held responsible for any damages incurred, directly or indirectly, as a result of the use of this product. 

This includes, but is not limited to, hardware damage, software loss, data loss, loss of time or income. We make no warranties, express or implied, regarding this product or any other.

You use MakeTab at your own risk.

Doesn't that make you feel so much more comfortable :-)? It does me!