In short TextTable is a tool to convert table data into plain text and vice versa and offers the ability to perform simple sql operations on the table data given.

Although there are a plenty of modern file fomats available which should be considered for new development, plain text file are around always. I'd to deal with them during my time in warehousing and business intelligence very often as many leagacy prefered this file format. Once automated processing was set up dealing with them was easy. But to analyse them in first touch, or to fix data errors with the first data delivery was a mess, tidous and boring coding very often. I was looking for a code editor which could treat the text files like plain text and as a table also. As I couldn't found one with staisfing feature for this case I wrote my own.

The UI consists of three basic views. The text view which shows the text representation (1). The structure description which explains how the raw text is translated into table data (2). And the table data of the text (3).

The text view contains the raw text data which is processed. The text view can by populated by copy and paste or by opening a file via the menu.

This pane shows the structure description with the text table syntax which is described below in detail. The description is at panel (1). At panel (2) you'd see syntax errors of entered description. With the "Text to Table Feature" (3) the raw text given at the "Text File" tab is processed into the table structure utilizing the table description and can be shown at the "Table" tab then.

As the raw data was processed into table data you can act on the data like on simple table data at a sql database with a simple sql language "TableQuery" which is described below in detail. The "TableQuery" e.g. supports simple update statements wich could be used to fix data errors for example After that the table data can be rendered back into raw text applying the structure description again with the "Table to Text" feature. Which is accessable from the toolbar or the menu.

As mentioned above the tool supports two languages. The "TextTable" language is used to describe the structure of data at the raw text. The "TableQuery" language is used to process the table data.