Zeus IDE

Hallo!
I am not a programmer, but a writer.
I need a useful editor with scripting capability a non-programmer can understand.
From the little I have learned trying the product, I think that I could use it.
The work I wish to do relates with:
1. Marking up sentences in their sentence parts.
2. Changing the sequence of sentence parts to simplify translation.
3. Changing sentence parts expressions in one language to meet the needs of another language.
4. Making my own dictionary to assist in translation.
5. Finding more documentation.
I do these things manually to be able to translate texts I have written in English into German.
Can I do such with the scripting capability in Zeus?
Where can I find some useful scripts that meet such characteristics?
For any help I would be very grateful.
Thanks for any help.
Kind regards, patforkin,

Hi patforkin,

I am not a programmer, but a writer.

As a writer hopefully you will still find Zeus useful.

From the little I have learned trying the product, I think that I could use it.

I think Zeus does fit your description, but please understand it takes all new Zeus users a week or two before they start to understand how Zeus works.

So I suggest to you is don't get frustrated with Zeus too soon as it can seem complicated at first and when in doubt post a message to the forum.

The work I wish to do relates with:

I will give my impression of which part of Zeus these apply to.

1. Marking up sentences in their sentence parts.

When it comes to marking Zeus has keyboard and mouse marking.

For the keyboard there are many modes of marking: http://www.zeusedit.com/zforum/viewtopic.php?t=60

You can also select the default mouse marking mode using the Options, Editor Options menu, General section and using the Mouse Marking Mode radio buttons.

You can also do text marking from within a script.

2. Changing the sequence of sentence parts to simplify translation.
3. Changing sentence parts expressions in one language to meet the needs of another language.
4. Making my own dictionary to assist in translation.

I suspect this is where the scripting might come in handy.

5. Finding more documentation.

The forum is full of examples and information. There is also the Zeus help file found here: Help, Using and Configuring Zeus.

The Zeus documentation could be better, but having said that I have also seen worse

I do these things manually to be able to translate texts I have written in English into German.
Can I do such with the scripting capability in Zeus?

Yes. Since you do these tasks manually that suggests to me they are prefect candidates for scripting.

Where can I find some useful scripts that meet such characteristics?

I suspect you will need to write these. There are many examples of Zeus scripts here: http://www.zeusedit.com/zforum/viewforum.php?f=10

But these are generally programming related.

For any help I would be very grateful.

This is what I would suggest you do.

1) Decide on which scripting language you want to learn. I think for this your best choice might by Python.

So here is some Python documentation: http://www.python.org/doc/

But I would not bother too much about that documentation for now.

2) Next turn on Zeus Python scripting using the Options, Editor Options menu, Scripting panel.

3) Now write a Zeus Python script as follows:

a) Macros, Record Start/Stop menu to start recording
b) Use the File New menu to create a new document
c) Type in some text, any text into that new document.
d) Macros, Record Start/Stop menu to stop recording

You have just recorded your first Python macro.

You can playback the macro using the Macros, Playback menu.

You can view the macro using the Macros, View Source menu.

4) The next step would be to take one of you manual processes and try to automate it using a macro script. I would start with a simple task and naturally if you run into trouble writing the macro feel free to post a question to the forum.

As an example of a typical script, I created a simple Zeus script that automatically marks the current paragraph.

The code is here: http://www.zeusedit.com/zforum/viewtopic.php?p=9940

Cheers Jussi