Difference between revisions of "Create Custom Translation Tables"

Latest revision as of 15:10, 30 January 2017

You can easily create a translation table for your own needs. A 521-byte translation file consists of two 256-byte translation tables (a “to” table and a “from” table), followed by an 8-character name and a null (00) byte.

Each character (byte) in your file has 256 possible values. Therefore, each translation table is 256 bytes long. An existing value of “00” is translated to the first byte in the translation table; a value of “01” is translated to the second byte in the table, and so on.

The easiest way to create your own translation table is by modifying the supplied file user.tbl. As supplied, user.tbl translates every byte to the same value, i.e. it does nothing useful. Each translation table in user.tbl consists of the bytes (in hex):

00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F 10 11 12 ...

Edit the Custom USER.TBL

1. Select File > Open or Ctrl-O to open file user.tbl for editing.
2. Change Config > File handling > <kbf>File type</kbd> to "256".
3. Select View > Toggle hex mode split to display the file in both hex and ASCII.
   • This is the easiest way to edit a translation file. The first line is the “to” translation table; the second line is the “from” table; the third line is the name. The “BYTE:” indicator on the status line indicates which byte in the table the cursor is at. It is usually easier to edit in hexadecimal.
4. You can edit either the "0" translation table (first line) or the “from” table (second line). This determines which item you need to select in the EDIT > Translate menu. If you edit the “from” table, this will also affect the screen display when the display mode is set to “32”.
   • For this example change byte # 01 from “00” to “2E”. Change byte # 28 from “1B” to “2B”.
5. If desired, change the name of the table on the third line. It can be up to eight characters long and is followed with at least one “00” (hex) byte.
6. Select FILE > Close buffer or Ctrl-W to save the file.

You can now load your custom table with EDIT > Translate > Load translate table and try it out. Loading other Translate Tables >>

Translating Files

• Translate between EBCDIC and ASCII
• Translate between ASCII and Unicode
• Translate between ANSI and OEM-PC
• Loading other Translate Tables