The simplest conversions for PSPZap involve reformatting of data such as:

• Standardising or 'beautifying' program source code.
• Converting data records e.g. from comma-separated format to table format.
• Converting word processing documents from one format to another.
• Standardising web pages in HTML or XML

The key thing to note is that the data in the above conversions follows a predictable pattern. That is, all files above have rules which dictate their content. There is little or no interpretation based on context. The opposite of this is a natural language (English, Spanish etc.) where context is critical to interpretation and translation. So clearly natural language translation is beyond PSPZap.

PSPZap is good at tiering constructs. For example in any document, words make up sentences which in turn make up paragraphs which in turn make up pages. These four tiers (word, sentence, paragraph, page) are easily represented in PSPZap. PSPZap can deal with any number of tiers. For example we have developed PSPZap construct files having 20-30 tiers for certain programming language conversions. So complexity in terms of numbers of tiers is not really a problem. If you are considering PSPZap for a particular conversion, it will help you greatly if you can envisage the structure in terms of tiers, because this will lead you directly to the construct files (source and target) that you need for the conversion.

Please do not hesitate to email us if you want to discuss whether PSPZap is suitable for your particular conversion problem. We also welcome any efforts which result in sharing of PSPZap construct and transform files. So if you develop some PSPZap parameter files which might be useful to other PSPZap users, please do let us know.