Displaying Text from a File on the Drawing

The contents of a text file may be read in and placed on a drawing using Programmable Macro Language (PML) file handling facilities. For example (when at a NOTE):

ALIG TB JUST L

OPENFILE /filename READ !TOKEN

READFILE $!TOKEN !RECORD

NEW TEXP AT @ BTEX ’$!RECORD’

VAR !EXTENT EXTENT BTEX

The EXTENT query (together with PML array and string-handling commands) may be used to calculate the position of the next line of text.

Successive READFILE and TEXP commands may be used until the file is exhausted. The file may then be closed using:

CLOSEFILE $!TOKEN

Note that any ‘$’ characters in the file should be doubled.

PML is detailed in the Software customization Guide.