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FIN File Format Page 7

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Storing text in a FIN file is optional.

Copyright Notice

If the FIN file has a copyright notice, the Pointer to Copyright Notice in the file header points to (contains the address of) an unsigned short int (16-bit number, which is 2 bytes) that specifies how many characters (not how many bytes) of copyright notice text are stored, which is immediately followed by the copyright notice text in Simple Unicode UTF-16 format.

Text Titles

If the FIN file has column and row titles, the Pointer to Text Titles in the file header points to (contains the address of) an unsigned short int (2-byte unicode character in MSBFIRST order) which specifies a unicode delimiter character (default is 0x0000), followed with an unsigned short int (2-byte number) which specifies how many characters (not how many bytes) of titles text are stored, which is immediately followed by the titles text in Simple Unicode UTF-16 format.

Each title is a text string that is followed with a delimiter. The last title is followed with a delimiter even though there are no more titles after it. After that last delimiter must be a null-terminating (0x0000) character.

Leading and trailing spaces for each title are allowed to optionally separate the titles from delimiters, and any such leading and/or trailing spaces are removed by the application program. The last character, as mentioned above, must be 0x0000. The delimiters can also be 0x0000 (that is the default), or can be any character that is not used in the titles, such as the OR symbol (0x007C) if it is not used in any of the titles. If the delimeter is 0x0000, then the last two unicode characters are 0x0000 and 0x0000 (a delimeter followed by the terminating null).

There is one title for each column, followed with one title for each row. For example, if there are 6 columns and 9 rows, the first 6 titles are column titles (displayed above the columns), and the next 9 titles are row titles (displayed to the left of the rows of grid nodes).

If there is one more title than there are rows and columns, then the first title is considered to go in the upper-left, to the left of column titles, above row titles.

If there are two more titles than there are rows and columns, the first title is for the entire grid, considered to be displayed centered above everything else, and the second title goes in the upper-left between the column and row titles.

If the number of titles is not equal to the number of columns and rows, or one plus that, or two plus that, then the number of titles is invalid and the titles are not read.

Applications that do not display titles can ignore the titles, or use the titles for internal informational purposes.

Text Comments

Comments are optional. If the FIN file has comments, the Pointer to Comments in the file header points to (contains the address of) an unsigned short int (16-bit number, which is 2 bytes) that specifies how many characters (not how many bytes) of comments are stored, which is immediately followed by the comments text in Simple Unicode UTF-16 format without leading or trailing spaces.

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Tuesday, 06-Jan-2009 02:11:24 GMT