Have you ever tried out the viewing selection switches at the top of the SPECedit or NMS-Edit Section Viewer? They are designed to make it more easy for you to organize your list of spec. sections in a pleasing way.
The first option is the ‘Structured’ switch. The default choice is ‘ON’ but when you click it ‘OFF’, the NMS masters that you originally loaded into the project (with dark green icons) will be hidden from view. They are still in your project, but not visible in the list, since once they are first edited a second copy in the language of your project, English for example, is created. It is the second copy of the section that you will be editing in the future. The original ‘structured’ NMS masters are now hidden but still available should your specification require translation in the future. More about the structured masters for translation in a later post.
The second choice inserts ‘Subgroup’ and ‘Division’ markers in the file. This makes it easier for you to location a section you are looking for in a particular division, especially if you have a large project. And, it makes the list more attractive.
Finally, the ‘Inactive’ switch makes visible previous edits to your sections. SPECedit and NMS-Edit do not lose previous copies of a section you have edited, unless you choose to remove those edits deliberately. Each edit contains a timestamp of when the section was modified. To reactivate a previous version, first turn Inactive ‘ON’. Then simply ‘Remove’ the current version of the section (from the Project or Context menu once the section is selected). And then ‘Restore’ the older version in a similar way. Then you can continue editing from that older version, or turn the new version into a new section entirely … the combinations are endless. Once your work on older copies of sections is complete, turn ‘OFF’ the Inactive switch again.
Finally, you can set defaults for these switches in the System Preferences command, under the List and Tree Viewers tab.
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