Using a text editor to make your language tree

Before you edit the raw language file you must remember some rules!

  1. Use a Plain Text editor. Don't use Microsoft Word, Wordpad, Apple Pages or similar. When you have a plain text editor - no fancy formatting like bolding text or underlining is possible. Which is great for pasco - as it will mess with its head!. The only formatting you can use is a tab to indent the text (or use spaces). For example:

     Chat
     	Social Chat
     		Alright Mate
     		How's things?
     	Polite Chat
     		Good morning
     		How are you?
     		Anything I can do for you today
     Care Messages
     	Body Parts
     	Medical equipment
     		Chair
     		Bed
     I'll spell it
  2. Tabs and Spaces don't mix! Each line can start with either spaces OR tabs. Not both

So you cannot do this:

[space-space]I'll spell it

i.e. here the file has started with a space - but then given a tab. The next line has two spaces. In many text editors this is difficult to see - but effectively we have messed up pasco. Does it look at spaces or tabs?

  1. Cues can be put in brackets

for example if you wanted the person to be able to say "Hello World" (Main Voice) but a cue to be "Hello" we could do this:

Hello World(hello)

Editing with Notes on iOS

Unless you have a fancy iPad Pro - or are using an external keyboard you cant use tabs on the iPad - so you will have to use spaces instead. Where you would use one tab to indent - do the same with a space. Keep the number of spaces the same so your file looks nice and neat.

Editing with Notepad on Windows

Last updated