Text
PTC ALD can handle any type of text, provided it contains tags denoted by
<,
> or
; characters, to which
PTC ALD can apply styles (see
How ALD Applies Style to Text for further information about applying styles). This does not restrict the content to being of XML or SGML format, or even to being well formed, although if the content does consist of well formed XML/SGML
PTC ALD will ensure this status continues (see examples below):
• Data is not manipulated on import so its integrity is maintained in case it needs to be re-exported
• Integrated parsers (LibXML and PTC ALD's own parser) ensure that data continues to be well-formed throughout the document production process
• Options to only apply processing instructions in an XML-acceptable format can be set for text formatting
Text content is held in streams (tag type Tx) which are loaded into frames as required (see
Frames for further information). This method of handling text adds layer upon layer of flexibility in terms of how text can be used in the document production process. Amongst other benefits document content can be created dynamically by simply referencing the stream that contains the text; content can be reused effectively; streams can be queried and results passed to variables to support the application of conditional formatting (see
Variables for further information); content can be passed to external applications such as Perl for edit.
PTC ALD also supports connectivity to a nominated database to allow the extraction of text from database fields for import. The fact that PTC ALD does not manipulate text on import gives it a competitive edge here too, since an additional step of converting text to well-formed SGML/XML is not required as part of this process.
The incorporation of the Unicode standard has enhanced PTC ALD’s already comprehensive language support. As a result of Unicode compliance, PTC ALD is able to offer language support for over 70 languages, including Chinese, Japanese and Korean. The inclusion of support for diacritic markers and surrogate Unicode pairs within PTC ALD means that even users without direct access to Unicode can use these characters. PTC ALD also supports the definition of custom fonts by mapping Unicode character ranges to Unicode character ranges in existing fonts available to PTC ALD. These "PseudoFonts" are useful, for example, where a font preferred by a customer is not available in a Unicode form, or a user wishes to switch between Western and Asian characters without wishing to use a font change instruction. PseudoFont control streams are created via the tfctrl macro.