About DiveTab Scripts

DiveTab scripts, also referred to as modules, define a portion of the DiveTab application that includes the menu, data, document, repository, and web page areas. When you develop a DiveTab application, you create scripts to define how the information is accessed and displayed. A DiveTab application can use one or more DiveTab scripts. One primary script, usually with a menu area, is specified as the starting point or landing page.

Each DiveTab script starts with a top-level divetab tag to identify the file as a DiveTab script. The divetab tag includes a version string attribute followed by a set of braces.

divetab version = "0.0" { 
  ... 
}

Between the open and close braces, various tags, one per line, define the application. The development process includes the use of both GUI and text editors. A DiveTab script is saved with the file extension divetab.

A DiveTab script can be categorized into the following major blocks:

Menu Area Block—Contains tags to define menu buttons.
Definitions Block—Contains tags that can be used by multiple data pages.

These include tags for Column Sets, Expand Sets, and Elements.
- Column Sets provide tags for setting up columns to be used for consistent data presentation on multiple pages.
- Expand Sets provide tags for defining a standard set of additional columns available to the end users.
- Elements contain the various tags for designing free-form areas for central and overview pages.
These tags can be included directly under a specific data page. However, by placing the tags under a Definitions block, they can be used by different data pages multiple times.
Data Area Block—Contains the various data pages for analyzing data. Within the data area, data pages can be placed within a Sections or Pages block.
Non-Data Area Block—Contains other content such as presentations, documents, and web pages.

Here is an example of a DiveTab script with key blocks collapsed.

DiveTab scripts use syntax that is similar to Spectre scripts.