There are several ways to organize text formats. You can apply
them directly wherever you need them, as you did when you
formatted the sample document in this chapter, and set the options
for
heading each time you used it.
If you are creating only one document, you can organize text
formats by defining or redefining them at the top of the document.
For the example document used in this chapter, you might create
your own text formats (H1 and H2) and place them
at a point in the document that comes before calls to either of
them. A common practice is to place them before the document's
main content. You can then use them instead of heading.
For example, you can define H1 and H2 as follows:
{define-text-format H1 as heading with
level = 1,
font-size=14pt,
color="green"}
{define-text-format H2 as heading with
level = 2,
font-size=10pt,
color="olive"}
If for reasons of organization, you prefer to maintain the
document and text formats used by the document in separate files,
you can put all the text format definitions in one or more files,
then
include the file at the top of each document.
For example, you can create a text format file called sales-reports-formats.curl. Then at the top of each sales report
document, before the {document-style ...} and {set-document-properties ...} lines, enter the following line of
code:
{include "sales-reports-formats.curl"}
If sales-reports-formats.curl is not in the same
directory as the sales report document files, use the url
format to specify its location. For example:
{include "file:///c:/sales/sales-reports-formats.curl"}
For documentation sets that require an entire suite of text
formats, including text procedures, and possibly support code such
as class definitions and procedures, it is more efficient to keep
the definitions in separate files which are grouped together as a
code package. The documents that call them
import the
package.
It is better to import a package than to include
files, because each applet the includes a file loads and stores
that file in a separate area of memory, which is inefficient in
terms of both performance and memory usage. Files in an imported
package are loaded and stored once and reused by all applets using
the same package.
Consider a simplified example. You have two files containing text
formats.
c:/sales/report-formats1.curl contains:
{define-text-format public H1 as heading with
level = 1,
font-size=14pt,
color="green"}
{define-text-format public H2 as heading with
level = 2,
font-size=10pt,
color="olive"}
Note: Anything defined in package files, such as formats,
classes, or procedures, must be declared
public in order
to be accessible to code outside the package.
Create a file named load.scurl in the same directory as
the two text format files, having the following content:
{curl 6.0 package}
{package SALES}
{include "report-formats1.curl"}
{include "report-formats2.curl"}
Then at the top of each document file, import the package with the
following line of code:
{import * from SALES, location = "load.scurl"}
Packaging text formats is no different from packaging any other
source code written in the Curl® language. You can create
circular dependencies that
you must resolve before your source code can work. Since the Curl
language is a content-based language, the seamless binding
between content and source code also extends to binding text formats and
support source code in the same package.
To fully understand packages, you need to understand the Curl language as a
development language. See the language sections of the Developer's
Guide, which begin with the
Files chapter . See the
Packages chapter for additional
information on packages. Also see
the API Reference on
include,
import, and
package.
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