.\" dtaus - Converter for DTAUS files
.\" Copyright (c) 2000,1  Martin Schulze <joey@infodrom.org>
.\"
.\" This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/ormodify
.\" it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
.\" the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
.\" (at your option) any later version.
.\"
.\" This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
.\" but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
.\" MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
.\" GNU General Public License for more details.
.\"
.\" You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
.\" along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
.\" Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA.
.\"
.TH DTAUS 5 "17 November 2001" "" ""
.SH NAME
dtaus \- Converter for DTAUS files
.SH DESCRIPTION
The
.BR dtaus (1)
program reads and writes German DTAUS files.  DTAUS is an semi-acronym for
.BR D aten T räger AUS tausch.
It is used by German credit institutes in order to implement money
exchanges between accounts and credit institutes.  These files are
always called
.IR DTAUS0.TXT .

Since they are shipped in a weird ascii format that is not quite
readable and writable for human beings a special control format was
invented.  The
.BR dtaus (1)
program reads and writes such a control file and generates a proper
DTAUS file if requested or decodes one.
.SH "CONTROL FILE"
The control file implements a very simple format which was invented
only for use with the
.BR dtaus (1)
program.  Like with many *nix configuration files empty lines and
those beginning with a hash mark (``#'') are ignored.  The remaining
file is splitted into three major parts: one BEGIN record
(representing the A record), several regular records (representing C
records) and one optional END record (representing the E record),
which is ignored when the control file is read but is extracted from
the bank file if one is decoded.

Here's a short sample for a control file:

  BEGIN {
    Art   \fItype\fR
    Name  Martin Schulze
    Konto 123545
    BLZ   2004002
    Ausfuehrung 23.12.2001
    Euro
  }

  {
    Transaktion \fItransaction\fR
    Name   Martha Schulze
    Konto  98832
    BLZ    2004003
    Betrag 20.00
    Zweck  Gebühr Wohnheimnetz
    Text   Anschluß u. 11+12.97
  }

  ...

Please note that several field names are used in both the BEGIN and
the regular record.  When used in the BEGIN record they denote your
name and your bank account.  When used in a regular record they are
affiliated with your customers data.

You may use up to 15 fields entitled as
.BR Text .
They will be recorded one by one and stored into additional data
records using the same order.  This way you could add a detailed
description of the type of money transfer if you like.  The contents
of the field
.B Zweck
are most probably what the customer will see on their bank statements.

The field
.B Ausfuehrung
is optional and denotes the day when the entire transaction should be
processed.  The date has to be given as DD.MM.YYYY and will be
translated into the resulting bank file literally.  It may not be
younger than the creation date of the file which will automatically be
inserted by
.BR dtaus (1).
The processing date also may not be more than 15 years later than the
creation date.
.SS Explanation of type
One of the following:
.TP
.I LK
Lastschrift Kundenseitig
.TP
.I GK
Gutschrift Kundenseitig
.TP
.I LB
Lastschrift Bankseitig
.TP
.I GB
Gutschrift Bangseitig
.SS Explanation of transaction
One of the following:
.TP
.I Einzug
Bankeinzug
.TP
.I Gutschrift
Überweisung
.PP
You may only use one of these for the entire file.  You are not
allowed to switch between Einzug and Gutschrift within the same file.
If you require the credit institute to process both types, you'll have
to provide two separate diskettes.
.SS "Support for Euro"
From January 1st 2002 the currency in many European countries, Germany
is among these, changes to Euro.  Hence, money transfer changes from DM
(formerly known as ``Deutsche Mark'') to Euro.  The format
specification of DTAUS was meant for DM but was modified in 2001 to
support Euro as well.  The current version of
.BR dtaus (1)
supports both currencies.  It defaults to using DM, however.  To
switch to Euro, simply add the keyword
.B Euro
to the BEGIN record.
.SS "Character Encoding"
German Umlauts are converted into two 7-bit characters on the fly so you
don't need to care about them.  Since the
.I DTAUS0.TXT
file only uses uppercase letters every text is also converted to
uppercase.

Except for the way records are delimited the format should be self
explanatory.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR dtaus (1).

DTAUS files use a special but simple and publically documented format.
It is included in the distribution of
.BR dtaus (1)
as
.IR dtaus.txt .