BreakVerter

DESCRIPTION:

BreakVerter is a Ruby library and commandline tool for conversion of text between linebreak encoding formats of unix, windows or mac.

FEATURES/PROBLEMS:

  • Usable as library and commandline tool

  • Tested and fully working on:

    • Ubuntu Linux 8.10 i386_64 (Ruby 1.8.7 and 1.9.1p0)

    • Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 i386 (Ruby 1.8.6)

    • Windows XP i386 (Ruby 1.8.6)

  • The commandline tool doesn’t work with Ruby 1.9.x because the user-choices gem is not yet updated. A patch is available here: rubyforge.org/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=24307&group_id=4192&atid=16176

SYNOPSIS:

Commandline

The default output encoding is unix. You can also choose mac and windows.

breakverter -o windows unix.txt windows.txt

If no target file is specified the output will be sent to STDOUT.

breakverter -o windows mac.txt > windows.txt

You can set the default with the environment variable BREAKVERTER_OUTPUT.

export BREAKVERTER_OUTPUT=mac

breakverter windows.txt mac.txt

Library

First of all you have to load the BreakVerter gem:

require 'breakverter'

You can put strings or objects responding to to_s into the convert method and optionally define a target linebreak encoding. The default encoding is :unix. You can also choose :mac and :windows. Notice that the :mac encoding is deprecated. Modern Apple machines also use :unix linebreak encoding.

windows_string = "Abcdef\r\nAbcdef\r\nAbcdef"

Aef::BreakVerter.convert(windows_string, :unix) #=> "Abcdef\nAbcdef\nAbcdef"

Alternatively you could include BreakVerter into the String class and use it in the following way:

class String
  include Aef::BreakVerter
end

"Abcdef\nAbcdef\nAbcdef".linebreaks(:mac) #=> "Abcdef\rAbcdef\rAbcdef"

REQUIREMENTS:

  • rubygems

Additional for commandline

  • user-choices

Additional for automated testing

  • hoe

  • rspec

  • sys-uname

INSTALL:

Normal

gem install breakverter

Additionally for the commandline tool:

gem install user-choices

High security (recommended)

There is a high security installation option available through rubygems. It is highly recommended over the normal installation, although it may be a bit less comfortable. To use the installation method, you will need my public key, which I use for cryptographic signatures on all my gems. You can find the public key and more detailed verification information in the aef-certificates section of my rubyforge project

Add the key to your rubygems’ trusted certificates by the following command:

gem cert --add aef.pem

Now you can install the gem while automatically verifying it’s signature by the following command:

gem install breakverter --ignore-dependencies -P HighSecurity

Please notice that you will need other keys for dependent libraries, so you may have to install dependencies manually.

Automated testing

You can test this package through rspec on your system. First find the path where the gem was installed to:

gem which breakverter

Go into the root directory of the installed gem and run the following command to start the test runner:

rake spec

On Windows systems you have to run the following instead:

spec spec/**/*_spec.rb

If something goes wrong you should be noticed through failing examples.

DEVELOPMENT:

This software is developed in the source code management system git hosted at github.com. You can download the most recent sourcecode through the following command:

git clone git://github.com/aef/breakverter.git

Help on making this software better is always very appreciated. If you want your changes to be included in the official release, please send me a patch through the project’s tracker at rubyforge.org. You can generate a patch-file by the following command:

git diff > patch.diff

Please make sure to write tests for your changes and notice that I can’t promise to include your changes before reviewing them.

LICENSE:

Copyright 2009 Alexander E. Fischer <[email protected]>

This file is part of BreakVerter.

BreakVerter is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see <www.gnu.org/licenses/>.