SI Tip of the Day: Repeatedly double-clicking expands selection true to XML

SpecsIntact users, you've got to try this out, if you haven't stumbled onto it already.

After you double-click once to select a word, try double-clicking again. And again. And again. What you will see is that your selection expands, to each higher level in the XML structure of the document. This is an easy way to then delete things that don't apply to your project, without breaking the XML structure.

One double-click, for example with title (TTL) tags.


And another, selects the whole title.


Again, selects the whole subpart.


Hit the delete key.


Test: Alt, t, v, file is valid.



Or you could keep double-clicking to select the next higher nesting subpart, etc., etc.



(Be aware if your project's governing district has rules like using the word OMITTED / Omitted for deleted items that affect subsequent numbering, that you can't just delete, so this feature cannot always be used for a District with such a rule, e.g. Savannah. But for everyone else, and for any paragraphs whose deletions do not affect subsequent numbering....WOOHOOO!!!, this is a great feature I did not know about until reading the fine print in 09 06 90.)

SI Tip of the Day: Easy way to undelete

If you want to undelete something, often the easiest way is to just delete the tag.

You have to have tags turned on. You have to have Revisions tracking turned off.


Then you can delete any beginning or ending DEL tag with the backspace or the delete key, to undelete the struck text.

SI Tip of the Day: Shift+Delete Keystroke to Delete Blocks of Text

TIP: A little-known keystroke Shift+Delete can be used when your cursor is at beginning of an XML tag such as SPT, TXT, LST, ITM, to instantly and correctly delete everything enclosed by the start tag and its associated end tag.

Screenshots - Before:

After:

Still a good idea to use Alt, T, V to check validity. 

AND BE AWARE that any nested subparts will also be deleted if you delete a parent SPT tag and all that is within it using Shift+Delete.

(This information is found in the built-in help system, under SpecsIntact Editor > Using the SI Editor > Tips & Techniques. Along with a lot of other good tips & techniques ;)

SI Tip of the Day - Tag submittals carefully!

What a fun welcome to work this morning! SpecsIntact was crashing every time our Specs Coordinator tried to run the submittal register for a large project we are working on. There are 115 spec sections in this volume, so it took a considerable process of elimination to see just which section(s) were the culprit. To narrow it down, she and another specifier tried running the register on the first half of the volume. No crash! So they knew the offending section(s) had to be somewhere in the second half of the book. Guess what - it crashed when running the second half - so now they worked from the other direction - adding more and more sections to the mix, until when they eventually added 26 56 00 EXTERIOR LIGHTING it crashed again. As a final test, they ran a register with all the sections EXCEPT 26 56 00. No crash!

Here's where I came in. What was causing this mysterious behavior, and how could we correct it in time to get a complete submittal register to the printing company in time, including the exterior lighting submittals? I set to work with a clean section from the UFGS master in a sandbox SpecsIntact project folder, editing only the submittals Article... interesting little discovery:

The consultant had used <SUB> tags around a whole paragraph in one of the submittals! I think there must be a character limit for a submittal description, and we were majorly exceeding it. Like Buster in the movie Groundhog Day, we were trying to make it eat the whole cow, instead of bite sized pieces! Unfortunately, there was no warning or opportunity to do the Heimlich maneuver - maybe SpecsIntact's cholesterol was a little high or something because it seemed to have suffered an immediate heart attack. Software coroners, thankfully, unlike coroners for humans, have some more chances to analyze what happened and try to get it right.

After deleting the <SUB> tags around this paragraph, touching up the reviewer designations, and reassuring SpecsIntact that it would all be ok, I ran a complete submittal register without crashing! :-)

Chris