Patent ID: 8407587

Claim:
A system for processing a document having associated field definitions for a target system operating in a non-Unicode encoding scheme in a text editor in a computing environment operating in a Unicode encoding scheme, the system comprising: a processor, a computer readable memory and a computer readable storage medium: a source encoding mechanism in an editor parameters module of the text editor, wherein responsive to importing a document in a non-Unicode encoding scheme into a text editor operating in a Unicode encoding scheme, the source encoding mechanism is configured to determine a source encoding of the originating document; a field definitions mechanism in the editor parameters module of the text editor, wherein the field definitions mechanism is configured to determine one or more field definitions that are in effect for a given line in the document in the Unicode encoding scheme, wherein the field definitions provide a predefined formatting structure of the individual lines of text in the document, and to determine one or more shift-out or shift-in bytes in the document; a validation process of the text editor, wherein the validation process is configured to determine whether one or more field violations exist in the document as a result of importing the document in the non-Unicode encoding scheme into the text editor in the Unicode encoding scheme; a document management module of the text editor, wherein responsive to a determination that importing the document into the text editor results in one or more field violations, the document management module is configured to provide an identification of the one or more field violations; and a parser process configured to determine if a change to the document in the Unicode encoding scheme violates one of the one or more field definitions within the document in the non-Unicode encoding scheme and to provide an indication to the text editor when a field definition violation is determined; wherein the text editor, responsive to a determination that the change does not violate one of the field definitions associated with the document in the non-Unicode encoding scheme, is configured to allow the change to the document; wherein the text editor is configured to maintain field definitions of the document as a result of the change, wherein maintaining field definitions of the document comprises deleting spaces in a field in the document when the change is an insert and wherein maintaining field definitions of the document comprises inserting spaces in the document when the change is a deletion; and wherein the source encoding mechanism, field definitions mechanism, validation process of the text editor, document management module of the text editor, and parser process are program instructions stored on the computer readable storage medium for execution by the processor via the computer readable memory.