Thanks Bill for your help,
I'm not very technical minded so this sounds very complex and daunting! :)
I'll see if maybe Steve can step me through it. Mainly I want to create
copies of files in our private puddle and in our dictionary puddle for our
literature puddle. I want a complete literature puddle so that i can get
some sound statistical information from it regarding the frequency of
symbols for Maltese Sign language literature writing..
fingers crossed i don't blunder!
maria

> A fast way to do what Steve is suggesting for the ID numbers would be to
> do a search and replace in OpenOffice Writer.   Here's how:
>
> In the Find and Replace Window click on the "More Options" button then
> select the "Regular Expressions" box.
>
> Now, because the existing numbers are single, double and triple digits,
> we would need to do a find and replace for each set.
>
> Start with the set of the largest numbers - triple digits (ie, 122, 456,
> 786, etc)
>
> In the Find box, put this:  id="[:digit:]{3}"
> In the Replace box, put this:  id="1&
> Click on Replace All (for example: this will change id="122" to
> id="1id="122", an intermediate step
> Now do a search and replace for 1id=" and replace with 1 (this will
> change the example from id="1id="122"  to id="1122", which is what you
> want.
>
> You do it this way so that you are adding 1000 to all the numbers
> instead of just appending "100" to the numbers, which would result in
> "1002", "10044", "100122", which is not what you want.   Also we have to
> start with the largest so that we don't inadvertently find the wrong
> numbers as we process the file.  For instance, if we changed "2" to
> "12", then when we search for 2 digit numbers next we would find that
> and change it to "112", which is not what you want.
>
> So the next search and replace would be for 2 digit numbers.
> Search for  id="[:digit:]{2}" and Replace with id="1&
> Then search for 1id=" and Replace with 10  (notice this is different
> than the first set of numbers, for which we replaced with just 1)
> For example: this will change 44 to 1044
>
> The last search and replace would be for single digit numbers
> Search for  id="[:digit:]{1}" and Replace with id="1&
> Then search for 1id=" and Replace with 100
> For example: this will change 2 to 1002
>
> Of course, if you're not sure that you don't have more than 1000 entries
> in your file, you can start by searching for 4 digit numbers.  If you do
> find 4 digit numbers then you'll want to increase the numbers by 10000,
> not 1000 and take that into account when changing the intermediate step
> for each set of digits.
>
> Bill
>
>
> On 7/6/2012 11:18 AM, Steve Slevinski wrote:
>>
>> On 7/4/12 4:24 AM, MARIA GALEA wrote:
>>> Hi Steve and the List,
>>>
>>> For Maltese Sign Language we have 3 Puddles that have been used - the
>>> Literature, the Dictionary and the Private Puddle.
>>>
>>> I would like to organize the entries so I would like to move things to
>>> and
>>> from these different Puddles. Is there any way I can do this fast
>>> without
>>> having to open each separate entry and copying it into another Puddle
>>> and
>>> then deleting it..?
>>>
>>> Thanks!
>>> maria
>> Hi Maria,
>>
>> The best option I can think of would be to download and edit the XML
>> files directly.  If you downloaded each puddle's XML file, you could
>> use a text editor to quickly copy and paste entries between the XML
>> documents.
>>
>> The biggest problem would be that each entry in a puddle must have a
>> unique ID number.  If you copied entries from one puddle to another,
>> you would have to make sure the IDs were unique.  Looking at 2 of the
>> Malta puddles, it looks like all of the IDs are less that 1,000.  So
>> to copy an entry from one puddle to the other, the safest way would be
>> to add 1,000 to the ID numbers.
>>
>> Here is an example:
>> <entry id="2" cdt="1208941776" mdt="1208941776" usr="LSM">
>>   <term>M518x515S10e00482x485S17610502x499</term>
>>   <term><![CDATA[GHOXRIN]]></term>
>>   <term><![CDATA[TWENTY]]></term>
>> </entry>
>>
>> If you wanted to copy this from one puddle to another, you would cut
>> it from one XML file and paste it into the other XML making sure to
>> change the *id="2"* to be *id="1002"*.
>>
>> It's not the most elegant solution, but it could work.  If you want to
>> do this, I can work with you.  We would lock the target puddles so
>> that they could not be edited.  You would download and update the XML
>> files.  Then I could import the new XML files and overwrite the puddles.
>>
>> I can't think of an easier way to do this.
>>
>> Regards,
>> -Steve
>
>
>