FilterEditor

DocOrigin FilterEditor (aka FE) is a GUI tool that provides for an interactive way to design rules for extracting data from textual overlay / spool / print /report files (we call them Source Files in this document) that are produced by existing systems. FilterEditor extracts the data based on the defined rules and produces an XML data file that can be consumed by DocOrigin Merge and possibly many of your own or your partners' XML data requirements.

The result of a FilterEditor design session is an .xfilter file which is then used at Merge runtime (or standalone) to convert the source file into XML. See Merge Filters.

Subject Matter Expertise

FilterEditor cannot automatically detect where fields are, how wide they are, or what their target field names are. You must understand the source file and be able to identify sentinel locations and values that you and the script you are producing can count on.

Once you have defined a discernable sentinel you can define any number of data extractions relative to that sentinel's location. And you can have the script continue to look for other sentinels which when found can be used to do more sentinel-relative data extractions.

Find sentinel -- extract, extract, extract...