This topic will deal with format stationery. As an output type much of its effectiveness has been replaced by the letter writer now present in the marketing system. It is nonetheless an easy-to-use way of presenting standard letters from any module.
It is important to note that it not a substitute for a word processor. It is a powerful text editor capable of doing much more than presenting standard letters. Functions such as word wrap and spelling checkers are not present. However, it is more than capable of handling complicated form designs, multiple line per item reporting as well as letter writing.
Format stationery designs are not self contained. They only exist in order to present the format of the output. A Report is required to partner this design, and it is the report which will open and link the files, search the database for the required records, using derived fields if required for selection or sorting, and then present them to the stationery format for printing.
The stationery format is only there to cope with the page size and the design of the record presentation on the page, it will depend on the report definition to do everything else.
In this topic we will look at two ways that format stationery can be used - as a letter writer and for multiple line per item reporting.
The menu option is called Format stationery and it is used to format items of stationery in everyday use such as invoices, cheques, remittance advices and so on. The editing of these items is not covered in this help as most of them can only be edited by an AUTOLINE software support user. If formatted stationery items such as these need amendment contact your system manager who will either make the required changes for you or contact AUTOLINE software support to have the amendments carried out. Amending items such as invoice or cheques will be done in much the same way as the two items which follow.
As has already been mentioned in the previous section, the format will not run by itself. It relies on a report to 'drive' it. The report will provide the format with all of the required data in the correct order, all the format has to do is to arrange it on the page. The only exception is that the report will not pass any derived fields to the stationery format.
It is not important which of the two definitions is created and designed first. There is however a very important thing to remember, the files which are named and linked in the report definition must match the list of dictionaries which are named in the format definition. This is very important because the field contents are passed across to the format definition at run time as field names within a file number. It is therefore important that the file numbers, signified by the order in which the files are named, are identical.
It is common practice to have one format definition driven by one report definition. In these cases, the three-character definition ID's of each will be identical. A report stored as RD1 would expect to drive a format definition stored as RD1 for example. However this is not compulsory and may be coped with by a slightly different method of selecting the driving report when it comes to running the format.
Creating a new format definition is similar to creating a new report definition. Simply type in a three-character ID and press ENTER. If the ID exists it will be loaded into the screen, otherwise the system will ask if a new one is to be created.
The ring menu presented initially will be as follows.
Exit Title Dicts Derived Format Compile Test-print
The Exit option behaves in exactly the same way as the Exit option on a report definition.
The Title option will be explained twice as it will be set up slightly differently depending on whether the format is being used to produce a letter or a multiple line per item report.
