Using Print Draft Changes with a certain context

Question

I found several threads here about Print Draft Changes. I have used them for a few years now.

For one project I would love to try the option of “applying changes in limited contexts” as hinted in the help subject “How do I apply consistent changes to the text when creating output with Print Draft?”.

I would also like to learn more on what Regex tools I can use there.

This is about project-custom admin-numbers.

This example is working for the project:

"(7\d\d\d)" > "BLO \1"

But I would like to apply this change only in the context of the marker \zblo because I fear that it will apply this change whereever a large number might show up in the scripture text or somewhere in the glossary.

I tried to guess the syntax but did not succeed with any of these:

in "\zblo": "(7\d\d\d)" > "BLO \1"

in "\\zblo": "(7\d\d\d)" > "BLO \1"

in "zblo": "(7\d\d\d)" > "BLO \1"

in zblo: "(7\d\d\d)" > "BLO \1"

The first three guesses above did not provide the expected output but triggered no error message. The fourth one above did trigger an error message about missing quotes, so somehow the first three guesses are “somewhat correct” and maybe I do not know enough what the PT8-team means by “context”.

Also I had no joy with “more regex” like adding a start-of-line-anchor ^ :

"^(7\d\d\d)" > "BLO \1"

If you have more detailed documentation or maybe one or two working examples, that would help a lot. Thank you.

Answer 1

You need to first match on the
content of the in “\zblo” marker.:

in “\zblo [^\]*”:

      This will select the text

starting with the \zblo marker until the next marker.

Comments

Thank you @anon467281. So you are saying what the help means by context can be any regex that contains my “target-for-change”, not a PT-level-marker.

I tried your syntax right away and got it going. If other users are searching for “context” and “print draft changes”, here are a few hints:

This line finally works after several different error messages and some testing:

in “\zblo [^\]*”: “(7\d\d\d)” > “BLO \1”

So:

• you need to replace the pretty quotes from @anon467281 (probably changed by this web-forum-tool) to normal quotes
• you need to escape the backslash inside the character class
• and you might need to escape the line-initial backslash if you are using a SFM for defining your own context.

This is nice, I feel I can now write more changes to make the output more user-friendly or more admin-friendly without the risk of changing actual scripture text. Thank you!!