New GTData Tools

The next version of GTData will contain 3 new utilities: GTTabImport, GTMergeStyles, and GTStyleMgr.

GTTabImport provides a method to import custom changes from one Table Definition Files (.tab) file into another. Custom changes include alternate table names, alternate attribute names, display order of tables, and display order of attributes. The Table and/or Attribute must exist in the main .tab file before it will be imported from the import file. The GTConfig.exe utility has the capability to import custom changes from one .tab file to another, but it has a GUI and could not be run on the command-line or in scripts. The GTTabImport utility takes this feature of GTConfig.exe and makes it scriptable.

GTMergeStyles provides an easy method for merging multiple style.def and style.map files together. This task could be performed by the Style Manager in GTViewer; however, with this utility, the process can be scripted.

GTStyleMgr provides several new features for manipulating Style Rules (style.def and style map files). The features it provides are listed below:

• The Chop option can be used to remove a string from the beginning of a style definition name (both in the .def and .map files). Some of the conversion tools (like the G/Tech converter, and the FME plug-ins) use filter id names that match style definition names. It is possible to create your filter id name/style name with a prepended string that is useful for the filter name, but not necessary for the style (since the style could be reused by several different filter ids). The chop option will simply remove this prepended string from the style definition names leaving the filter ids intact.
• The Strip option can be used to remove a square bracket enclosed string ( […] ) at the end of a style definition name. The style definition name will be updated in both the style.def and style.map files. This option is useful in a specific case where a features state (in service, proposed, retired, etc.) is appended to the filter id and style name. It may be useful to control the display of features by state, but they may not use different style definitions. The Strip option will remove the bracketed name in the style.def and style.map.
• The Thin option is a replacement for a previous tool called GTStyleThinner which looked at all definitions in the style.def and deleted any definitions that were not referenced in the style.map. This process of thinning the style defs can reduce the overall size of the style rules in a dataset (sometimes important on the device platforms).
• The Fill option can be used to populate only the empty style definitions in a style.def from another style.def file.
• The Import option can be used to import another style definition file. This option works identically to the Import Option in GTViewer when the import only if exists command it used. Therefore, only styles that already exists (empty or not) in the original style.def will be imported.