Duplicating one layout dxl column into another layout dxl column

Column 5 is a layout dxl I created. All I want to do is duplicate column 5 into the layout dxl column in which the below code will be pasted. Seems like this outta work, but nogo. I need the column 5 text to be in a string because what I'm eventually going to do is check to see if another string appears within the column 5 string.
Object o=obj
string colTxt
Column c = column 5
colTxt=text(c,o)
display colTxt
Any help? This seems like it should be easy. I'm using 9.2

MB
moheganburner - Wed Dec 15 18:16:42 EST 2010

Re: Duplicating one layout dxl column into another layout dxl column
Peter_Albert - Thu Dec 16 05:01:03 EST 2010

Re: Duplicating one layout dxl column into another layout dxl column
iannacones1 - Thu Dec 16 09:12:13 EST 2010

To get the Layout DXL from column 5:

string colTxt = dxl(column 5)

To set it in another column:

dxl(column 6, colTxt)

Re: Duplicating one layout dxl column into another layout dxl column
Peter_Albert - Thu Dec 16 09:39:45 EST 2010

string colTxt = dxl(column 5)

dxl(column 6, colTxt)

Re: Duplicating one layout dxl column into another layout dxl column
moheganburnerjr - Thu Dec 16 13:19:20 EST 2010

Re: Duplicating one layout dxl column into another layout dxl column
kbmurphy - Thu Dec 16 14:23:37 EST 2010

Am I missing something?? This seems extremely simple.
 

//CODE BEGIN
Column c = column 5
 
string s = text(c, obj)
 
display s
//CODE END

I can't preview this in Safari, so I apologize if the formatting is messed up.

Re: Duplicating one layout dxl column into another layout dxl column
moheganburnerjr - Thu Dec 16 15:33:23 EST 2010

Re: Duplicating one layout dxl column into another layout dxl column
Mathias Mamsch - Thu Dec 16 16:18:38 EST 2010

This is interesting. After the call to "text (column 1, obj)" display does not work anymore.
 

string s = text(column 1, obj) 
 
display "Hello"

does also not work, if column 1 is a DXL layout column. This looks very much like a DOORS bug (a global variable for the current column being reset after a call to text, therefore display failing).

Do you really need this? I am pretty sure, there are some more complex ways to work around this issue, i guess, but maybe you can just recalculate the value of your DXL layout column.

Regards, Mathias

Mathias Mamsch, IT-QBase GmbH, Consultant for Requirement Engineering and D00RS

Re: Duplicating one layout dxl column into another layout dxl column
kbmurphy - Thu Dec 16 17:36:32 EST 2010

Re: Duplicating one layout dxl column into another layout dxl column
Bob_Swan - Fri Dec 17 03:29:52 EST 2010

Re: Duplicating one layout dxl column into another layout dxl column
Peter_Albert - Fri Dec 17 05:11:58 EST 2010

This is how you create an attribute DXL from a layout DXL:

Open the view with the layout DXL column (in your example column 5). Make sure the column has a good title (in your example, I think "outlinks" would be appropriate).

Ensure that you have the module open in exclusive edit

Select "Tools --> Support tools --> Convert layout DXL to attribute DXL"

In the new dialogue box, select the "outlink" column (or however you have named it) and click "OK"

You will see a new column which displays the new attribute "DXL for outlinks"

You can now remove your original layout DXL column

Then, create a new layout DXL column. In this column, you can get the string output of your former layout DXL column, which is now contained in the new attribute with

string s = probeAttr_(obj, "DXL for outlinks)"

You can then use this string to do all the search you want, and display the final result.

Now, one big difference you must keep in mind: The layout DXL updates immediately, so any change which affects the results (in your case I guess the creation / deletion of a link) is immediately reflected on the screen.

The attribute DXL is different: It is only updated at special occasions, e.g. when you open the module, or change from read-edit to exclusive or shared edit, if you unlock a section, or press F5, or select "Tools --> Refresh DXL attributes", or if you set all attribute values to null. However, you don't have to bother about your new layout DXL (which does the search). It will update automatically when the attribute DXL is updated.

Hope that helps,

Peter
P.S.: As a general rule for attribute DXL, if the resulting string is null, the attribute DXL code should routinely set the attribute value to " " to avoid re-calculation over and over again. I don't know if the automatically generated code does this or not. It is not overly important, though, if you give the above steps a try, as it will wotrk in any case, but once it works and you fell familiar with it, you could check the attribute DXL code.

Re: Duplicating one layout dxl column into another layout dxl column
Peter_Albert - Fri Dec 17 05:16:38 EST 2010

string s = probeAttr_(obj, "DXL for outlinks)"

Update: I just checked, and actually the attribute DXL code generated by DOORS adds a carriage return to each string, so the attribute value is never null. You can hence ignore that comment.

Update 2: The correct DXL fragment is of course

string s = probeAttr_(obj, "DXL for outlinks")

Regards,

Peter

Re: Duplicating one layout dxl column into another layout dxl column
moheganburnerjr - Fri Dec 17 12:00:04 EST 2010

Peter, Thanks for the "Layout-to-Attribute for Dummies" tutorial. I'm definitely going to save that one!

Mathias/kb, How can I recalculate the below dxl to 'display' the result?

pragma runLim, 0
int lines[1] = {0}
void adjustLines(int depth, showAtDepth) {
    int count
    for (count = 0; count < 1; count++) {
        while (lines[depth-1] < lines[count]) {
            lines[depth-1]++
        }
    }
}
void showOut(Object o, int depth) {
    Link l
    LinkRef lr
    ModName_ otherMod = null
    Module linkMod = null
    ModuleVersion otherVersion = null
    Object othero
    string disp = null
    string s = null
    string plain, plainDisp
    int plainTextLen
    int count
    bool doneOne = false
    string linkModName = "*"
    for l in all(o->linkModName) do {
        otherVersion = targetVersion l
        otherMod = module(otherVersion)
        if (null otherMod || isDeleted otherMod) continue
        othero = target l
        if (null othero) {
            load(otherVersion,false)
        }
        othero = target l
        if (null othero) continue
        if (isDeleted othero) continue
        int oldLines = lines[depth-1]
        adjustLines(depth, 1)
        bool kick = (doneOne) && (lines[depth-1] == oldLines)
        if (kick) {
            lines[depth-1]++
        }
        if (depth < 1) {
            showOut(othero, depth+1)
        }
        doneOne = true
        if (depth == 1) {
            s = (identifier othero)
            if (!null s) 
            {
            displayRich("\\pard " s)
            }
        }
        lines[depth-1] += 1
    }
    if (depth == 1) {
        ExternalLink extLink
        doneOne = false
        for extLink in o->"" do {
            if (!doneOne) {
                displayRich("\\pard " "{\\b External Links:}")
                doneOne = true
            }
            s = richText description(extLink)
            if (!null s) 
            {
            displayRich("\\pard " s)
            }
        }
    }
}
showOut(obj,1)

Re: Duplicating one layout dxl column into another layout dxl column
moheganburnerjr - Tue Dec 21 09:09:50 EST 2010

Re: Duplicating one layout dxl column into another layout dxl column
Mathias Mamsch - Tue Dec 21 10:42:15 EST 2010

With "recalculate" I meant you should paste the same DXL layout code to the other column.

If that does not work, because you do not know the code of the DXL layout at runtime - I used the below code to get the column value of another column, by getting the DXL layout code from the column, and executing it on some other object and at the same time intercept the displayXY calls in the code and write the results to a buffer. This will also enable you to get the value of a DXL layout column for an object in another module (or baseline), even if you have that column not displayed in the module.

Hope that helps, regards, Mathias
 

Buffer gbColumnValue = create() 
 
string prefCode; 
 
prefCode = "  
Buffer bres = addr_ " ((addr_ gbColumnValue ) int) "\n
setempty bres
void displayRich (string x) { bres += x }
void display (string x) { bres += x }
void display (Attr__ x) { Buffer c = create(); c = x; bres += c; delete c; }
void displayRichWithColour (string x) { bres += x }
void displayRichWithColor (string x) { bres += x }
"
 
bool getColumnValue (Object o, Column c, Buffer result) {
    if (main c) return false
        if (attrName c == "" ) {
                
                Buffer code = create();
                code += "Object obj = addr_ " ((addr_ o) int) "\n" 
                code += prefCode; code += dxl c
                noError(); eval_ tempStringOf code; 
                string errMsg = lastError()
                delete code 
                result = tempStringOf gbColumnValue
        } else {
                result = (probeAttr_ (o, attrName c)) string
        }
        return true
}

Mathias Mamsch, IT-QBase GmbH, Consultant for Requirement Engineering and D00RS

Re: Duplicating one layout dxl column into another layout dxl column
moheganburnerjr - Tue Dec 21 17:14:08 EST 2010