Documentation, Printing, Webpage creation (HTML) with IRIS.
see also: Automatic Reports (AutoReport-Window)
GED has been designed to create reports quickly and automatically. You can add comfortably thermla images, additive texts. Small changes can be done without the need to start an external, huge software package. Especially for repetetive jobs the combination of auto-reports and the GED is really nice.
Please dont believe that GED would be a full replacement for Winword or a good HTML Editor. If you want to write larger portions of text, or if you want to create documents with high quality, then we still recommend additional helper applications. However the HTML reports creates by IRIS can be a good template for other apps.
GED could be run andtreated also as a stand alone application.
But its performance becomes best in interaction with the other
IRI windows:
The AutoReport window creates new docs and shows them instantly
with the GED. (A management for templates is integarted into the
AutoReport window). It offers functions to axpand the currently
shown GED report. You can add images from ThImage, Imnage, entire
films but also text and formatting elements to a report.
Whenever images are added to a report, then the image base is
involved: ALl images are first loaded to the image base before
they are routed to the report. It is also possible to add data
from the database to a report.
The functions of the AutoReport (and partially the GED) can be
programmed within macros. This permits to create even complex
reports easily. Report templates can be linked with automatically
running macros.
The GED creates always HTML files. This type of document is
universally available, not burdened with third party rights, can
be displayed with every computer and is suitable for further
publication on the Internet without any changes. A lot of helper
applications exists for editing, printing, manipulating HTML.
There are also enough converters available to translate HTML to
other formats (winword-docs, adobe-pdf,...).
IRIS creates all images whicha re integarted into reports always
as 24 bit windows bitmaps. This is memory and disk consuming but
available on every computer without licenses or fees. This type
of images can be also converterd easily to other formats. For
embedding logos to a report you can also use PCX. JPEG images can
be read and included as well.
The GED has been developed fully by ourselves and is is no way
linked to Windows specific libraries. So its operation and usage
can be differently sometimes from other apps you are used to.
Some 'very special' variants (options) of GED which are far away
from usual Windows style can be activated on demand.
The currently implemented GED is not yet complete. Some important
editor functions are not yet available - but we will integarte
them now one by one.
| Token display | Shows all HTML keywords (token) as text. This way you can easily see which formattings are used - and where they are. |
| Format display | Shows line breaks, end of paragraph, empty table borders and the page borders. |
| Text-Block display | Shows which parts of a text are belonging together. |
| Spaces | Shows a centered dot instead of a space. This makes determination possible between true spaces and typografic effects (kerning) |
| Use line cursor | Instead the block cursor - which frames an entire character - a line cursor is shown at the inserting position |
| Use WYSIWYG | The display follows the typography as it appears on a printer. There are always small differences between screen display and printed layout (due to resolution differences). So this option activates usage of the distances as they are used for the printer for character and word spacing. This view results sometimes in strange effects. And for docs which are not destined to be printed it is always better to deactivate this option. CAUTION: De/Activating this option results in new calculation of the wrapping! |
| Wrapping (automatic wrap): | The automatic wrappi g of text can be witched off,
limite to the actual window size (online view), set
specifically (pixel) or to DIN-A4 or matching the
connected printer. Using the Zoom 'A4' activates always also the wrapping to A4! |
| Use printer for A4: | If this option is activated then the Zoom A4 uses always the settings of the actual printer instead of the default settings for A4. |
| Derfault page size: | Definition of the 'usual size' for an A4 page (universal for all printers) |
| page borders: | Settbale in millimeters (mm) - only valid while printing. |
For effiency in editing software has usually keyboard shortcuts for professional users. Here the list of the currently implemented keyboard shortcuts:
| Shift+Enter: | Line feede (<br>) instead of a new paragraph |
| Strg+Enter: | Insert page feed |
| Strg+U: | Underline on/off |
| Strg+K: | Italic on/off |
| Strg+B: | Bold on(off |
| Strg+T: | Token display on/off |
| Strg+D: | Format+Spaces display on/off (D:display) |
| Strg+O: | Show Options (View) Dialog |
HTML permits to specify all kinds of exotic fonts. But if you
want to hand your reports over to other persons then you should
restrict yourself to the 'basic' fonts. You can specifiy whatever
you want for display and printing on your own computer. But we
recoomend to restrict fonts to the necessary differentiation.
Else you'll get just more problems:
With View -> Font Options you can specify the fonts GED uses
for display and printing. Usually there is no need to modify
them.
| default - 12 - Times New Roman | font used for for all texts which are not especially formatted. This is usually a proportial font with variable character cell width). |
| fixed - 12 - Courier New | font for all texts which require the same character distance (monospace). These are all texts where spaces and line feeds are important) |
| H1..H6 - 36..10 - Arial | fonts for titles (headlines, headers) in 6 levels. |
| token - 12 - Arial | font for the display of the HTML tokens which are usually inisible but control the view and layout of the document. |
| ----------------------------------------- |
GED is not based on millimeters or inches,
but on pixels. So the size '12' is not '12' as
used in typography. Instead a '12 point' font is shown the same
way other apps are showing it on the screen. On the printer the
font will have the same size (or a bit smaller) as on the screen
- in relation to other grafics or delimiting lines (tables). But
because we are specifying the format of the printed output by
pixels a '12 point font' will be almost not 12
points (12/72 inches)!
If the font on the printed document is too small then you can
redfine it whenever you want. A chnage of the font size in the
options dialog will instantly reformat the entire document. If
you dont store the new settings then IRIS will use the previous
settings for the next start. Future versions of IRIS might
contain 'profiles' into which you can store some basic settings
(and also the fonts) fore each task., Perhaps this setting would
be also possible by macro.
You always had the opinion that a computer should care about
these things and not bother you? Basically you are right and GED
does its very best to keep those tehcnical details hidden from
you. But if the result of the display on the screen and the
printed sheet of paper does not look like you want it, then you
should know what's behind and how you can yet the best out of it
- and not just what your computer wants to do right now.
If you are not interested in a more detailled view inside the
facts and if you are satisfied with your screen and printer
output then you can skip the following paragraphs.
Whenever you inport an image (thermal image) into a document
then you expect (of course) that every pixel of the image looks
like a pixel on the screen. But as soon as you are using any
'zoom' function you will see that thigns are not as easy as they
seem to be: A zoom of 200% is still easy to do: Every pixel
becomes 4 pixels. But at 150% life becomes difficult for a
computer: He does what he can do easily: Every second picel is
doubled. This looks already bad. If you are using 50% then every
second pixel row and line is lost! Thin lines are hidden entirely
and letters within grafics become unreadable. We won't discuss
75%, 66% or 133% or even 437%. It always looks very
catastrophally!
And now we (the programmers) are having another challenge: You
also want to print a page! But your printer is
having another different opinion about a pixel. And the printer
is calculating with '300 dpi' or '360 dp'. dpi means: 'Dot per
Inch'. If you want to print an image which has 100x100 pixels
then it is a good question how the printer should print this. Of
course we could use 'odd' Magnifications. Then the output looks
as strange as odd zooms on the computer screen. Or we (you and I)
agree that the printer will use only evenb zooms (200%,
300%,400%). Then the image looks perfect.
Unfortunately this has a sideeffect: Your document is fixed for
using exactly one printer. And if you are using a different
printer - or your customers try to print a page but with a
different printer, then you'll have the same uncomfortable
effects. Ans we - the software manufacturers - cannot predict
what printers you will use. So we can implement only 'default
settings' which are 'matching almost'.
Scaling fonts is (btw) far worse than scaling images: Despite
of modern compuzter technlogy fonts cannot be transformed to any
wanted size until today. If you are using a zoom of 386.6% then
the font might be scaled only uip to 250%. In such cases it will
happen that the position of words does not match properly - and
the transitions to attributes (underline, bold, larger font) are
not matching properly the screen. You can watch this effect
especially if a text is positioned on top or bottom of an image.
Or withi the distance and size of texts to each others or to
delimiting lines as tables.
'Usual' text processing software tries to 'fit something' - And
in many cases (as well for IRIS) the WYSIWYG looks a bit strange
then. But serious design and layout programs for highest quality
are (and must be) respecting also the output medium. and dont
permit a user to setup everythign thy want (353%) but just those
settings which are technically possible and are then looking
well. IRIS - as a low level page design tool - tries a middle
course. And we hope that the results are fitting your needs.
If you want to print a document with GED then you'll activate
the zoom 'A4' or 'Printer'. IRIS is then using the corresponding
pixel values from the option settings to scale the document to A4
or your printer. For 'A4' we assume that practically every
printer can use 300dpi or 360dpi - and can print at least 700
pixels in color per line. Because such printers are usually
printing 2500-3000 pixels per line IRIS will use automatically a
zoom of 300% or 400% for printing. This looks properly on the
page. (600+720 dpi printer will print with a zoom of 600%-800%).
IRIS will determine your printer instantly aftewr selection and
mewasure the zoom it can use.
If your printer is exactly missing a zoom-limit (example) we
could perhaps print with 397% then IRIS will still use only 300%.
In such cases 25% of your page will stay unused! In such cases
you could say: "OK, then the printer should print with 300%
- but not ony 700 pixels bit 1000. Then I could palce three
thermal images side by side". You can really do this. Either
you are changing your default settings for an A4 page - or you
let IRIS 'learn' your printer settings. With GED->File->Printer
Setup IRIS will analyse your currentl printer and will
propose what you can do. You can either set the printer zoom to
an odd value (example: 397%) and be happy with the result. If the
result is staifying then you can really use it. But you can also
align the page-size (more pixels into X-direction) automatically
by IRIS. Then 'more content' can be placed on your page.
In every case you should check how the text paragraphs are
wrapped after changing the page settings. Every change of the
page size will automatically recalculate - and wrap - the texts.
And this might perhaps create "orphans" or "widow
lines". (These are single lines on an elsewhere blank page).
The report window is a normal child window of IRIS. You can easily include it into the window layouts for the 'winboxes'. So it is very simple to place the report window side-by-side to the ThImage windoe (for working with both windows simultanously) - or to show also the AutoReport window.
| Menu | The usual menu line contains all tools for creating a normnal HTML page. Please keep in mind that HTML pages which are created here with File->New cannot be used for autoreport functions! |
| Upper Toolbar | The horizontal toolbar below the menu has functions for manual editing, changing and formatting HTML. All buttons can be also found as functions in the menus. |
| Left Toolbar | The vertical toolbar at the lefthand side of the GED
has functions for manual creation of IRIS reports.
Normally these tools would belong to the window
AutoReport. But because there is no report visible it
would help. So this toolbar has been also integarted into
the GED. All functions from this toolbar can be reached with the menus from the AutoReport window. |
| Statusline | The status bar is located at the bottom of the GED window. The current Zoom, the page number and more messages are shown here. |
| Scrollbar | In most cases an HTML page (or the entire doc) is too large for one screen. The scrollbars permit to move the visible section. |
| Outer border | The outer border surrounds the actual document and is painted with dark gray color. Its size can be aligned in the View-Options. If its size is 20 or more than rules appear in the formastting or tokern display mode. |
| Page border | The page border is the distance of the HTML text to the border of a sheet of page when the document is printed. The width of the page border display on the screen is not adapted automatically to this value but it is fixed. Its purpose oin the screen is only the optical separation between the text and the outer border. |
| Text area | The text area - which shows the current report - is drawn with white background. |
| functions labelled with [#] can be also found in the toolbar. c+A means CTRL+A ort STRG+A as keyboard shortcut. | ||
| File | ||
| # | New | A blank page is displayed. The current report is removed from the memory (not the harddisk). |
| # | Open | An existing HTML file can be opened for viewing, editing or exptending it |
| # | Save | The current HTML document is stored. |
| Save as | The current HTML document is stored with a new name. | |
| Preview ... (Internet) after save |
The current HTML doc is stored to disk. The the default internet bowser is started and shows the document as it would appear on the Internet - or alike a custimer would see it if he recewives only the file(s). | |
| # | The current HTML doc is printed. | |
| Printer Setup | The current printer is checked. Its parameters are from now on used for the display in WYSIWYG mode. | |
| Bearbeiten | Edit token | The current HTML token under the cursor is shown in a dialog box as text and can be edited. This is almost used for changing the attributes of HTML tokens. |
| View | ||
| c+O | Options (View) | The dialog for view options appear. Details see below. |
| Options (Fonts) | The dialog for setting the current fonts is apepars. Details see below. | |
| c+F | Display Format | The GED displayes all formatting elements of the page (in liught blue color). Details see below. |
| c+T | Display HTML token | The GED displays all tokens of the HTML code with
yellow background. It takes some days to get familiar
with this view - but it permits a very exact editing of
formatting elements. Tokens which are shown with red background are not interpreted by the GED. |
| # c+D | Toggle | Both option 'Display Format' and 'Display HTML' and acxtivated na deactivated. This toggle the level of details fore editing.. |
| One page | GED display just one page. | |
| Two pages | Two pages are shown side by side. This is helpful for setting page breaks manually. Editing can be done only in the eft page! | |
| All pages | All HTML page sin this report are shown. This is nice for havign a quicky survey about the entire report (and its size). | |
| # | Zoom 100% | Every pixel from images appear as one pixel on the screen. The text is scaaled appropriately. |
| Zoom 200% | Each pixel is doubled. | |
| Zoom 50% | Every second poixel row/line is skipped. | |
| # | Zoom User | The zoom is set to a free deinable 'user default value'. Depending on your taste and size of screen you can enter every zoom factor you like (we prefer 150%). This is also helpful because you can use the full width of the screen for editing and writing text. |
| # | Zoom variable | A dialog appears where you can easily select zooms from25% to 400%. You can also setz the User-Zoom value here. |
| Zoom printer page | The zoom is set to a value which display the entire printer width in the full GED window width. It is necessary to use File->Printer Setup prior this function. The parameters which are used for this function are located in the Options-View and can be manually adapted. | |
| Zoom A4 default page |
The zoom is set to a value that a normal A4 page is shown in the GED window. The size of a 'normal A4 page' is located in the View-Options and can be chnaged there. | |
| Window right | The GED window is repositioned and risized to match
the right half of the IRIS main window. This is useful for macro programming. |
|
| Document top | Shows the start of the document. This is useful for macros if a report has been finished and should be bisplayed from the beginning. |
|
| Document bottom | Shows the end of the document. This is nice for macros for continuous display how a report is growing. |
|
| Insert | ||
| horizontal line | A horizontal line is inserted into the report. (<HR>). Such lines are used for structuring HTML pages easily. | |
| Pagefeed | A pagefeed is inserted (<pagefeed>). Unfortunately this is not an HTML standard token but necessary for strcutured reports. Later versions of the GED will create single HTML pages for each pagefeed. | |
| # | Table | A table is inserted at the current cursor position. The amount of rows and columns and the width of the frame áre entered into a dialog. |
| # | List | A list (enumeration) is inserted. The list is extended automatically during editing. So no counter is required. |
| Image from disk | You can load an image from harddisk (through the
Image Window) which is imported into the report. This function is mainly used for importing logos. After execution the formatting dialog appears where the zoom and size of the image can be set. |
|
| Image from Image Window | The current image from the Image Window is imported. | |
| c+E | HTML Token | And HTML token can be instered into the report. This can be 'known' token - or 'unknown tokens'. GED is ignoring unknown tokens and shows them on request with red background. |
| Format | These options are changing the display of text. If a textblock has been currently marked with the mouse or keyboard then only this block is changed. If NO BLOCK is defined the just an HTML token is instered which starts to use this style (<u> for underline). If the style is already active at the current cursor position then the style is finished (</u> for end of underline is inserted) |
|
| # c+U | underline | text is underline |
| # c+K | italic | text is displayed italic |
| # c+B | bold | text is displayed bold. |
| # | smaller | text is shown smaller by one degree (standard: 3, smaller: 4,5) |
| # | larger | text is shown largher by one degree (standard:3, larger: 1,2) |
| performatted | The proportional font is ist. This permits to write exact tables because every character has the same width. (The default charset has variable width). |
|
| Paragraph | A paragraph token is inserted (<p>). | |
| Headline 1..6 | text is shown as a title (headline) of level 1..6 (1 is largest) | |
The view options appear in one large dialog. You can change the settings temporaryly with [OK] or store them to disk for next reboot with [save].
| Display | |
| Show tokens | View -> Show HTML token |
| Show format | View -> Show format |
| Show text blocks | Shows text blocks with frames. |
| Show spaces | Display spaces inside HTML text as a centered dot |
| Line cursor | Uses the line cursor instead of the block cursor |
| Use WYSIWYG | The distances between characters and words are matching the printers magnification. This looks somehow strange but is more realistic if you want to seee how documents are printed later. |
| Activate marking areas | Marking an area with a mouse is no longer textflow and line oriented but rectangle oriented. This way you could later delete or modify texts based on columns. |
| Wrapping | |
| Off | No wrapping for text and graphics. |
| Window | wrapping is done at the GED window border |
| Pixel | wrapping is done at a specified amount of pixels. This permits to preview and HTML pages at specified screen widths (800,1024,1280,1600 pixels) |
| A4 Page | The sepcified A4 size is used for wrapping. Good for formatting pages destined for printing without knowing the printer in advance. |
| Printer | The specified parameters for the printer are used for wrapping. Good for A5, A3, Letter and othert special formats. |
| Misc | |
| % Size of GED right | The horizontal size of the GED after Ansicht -> Window right |
| Scroll speed | If the mouse leaves the window while you are marking an area to the left,right,top or bottom, then GED is scrollling automatically. This setting determines The spped of this scroll. |
| Draw border | Changes the size of the dark grey dreaw boder in the GED window. At 20 or more pixels rulers appear. |
| Page border | Changes the size of the light gray page border. |
| Printer | |
| Use DIB (Halftone) | Some printers (drivers) require DIB (device intependent bitmaps) for printing grafics properly in color or halftone. |
| Page Borders | The value of the distance between page border and the printed text on a paper. The borders to the right and bottom are calculated from the printer paramaters (see below). |
| Printer Page | |
| Pixels-X | The amount of grafic pixels which will be printed in X-direction. Depends on the used/connected printer and is automatically calcuated with File->Printer Setup. Can be also manipulated manually |
| Pixels-Y | same in vertical direction. These settings are used for Zoom-Printer and Wrapping-Printer. |
| Mag% | Magnification from the image pixels to printer pixels. |
| Zoom% | sould be identical to Mag% |
| Font% | Magnification of text pixels to printer pixels. Should be identical to zoom% - but can be changed to create other layouts. |
| Default page size (A4) | Specifies the default pixels for an A4 page. Herewidth you can create a layout which will match different printers later. This data is used for ZOom-A4 and Wrapping-A4. |
GED uses different charsets (fonts) for displaying and printing HTML pages. If you dont like our defualts then you can change them anytime.
The Size value is based on the 'point' size of a charset as specified typogrfically for printers. You should not use odd values (9,11,17). Normal value for documents 12 12, smallest readable text would be 10.
The Name muss correspond to the name of a
charset which is installed on your system. Our default names are
existing on every Windows PC since Win-95.
Caution: You can use only "True Type"
charsets!
| token | Charset for HTML tokens. Should have the same size as default. |
| default | Charset for normal text. Is usally a proportional font with variable width for each character. |
| fixed | Charset for 'preformatted' text. This should be a charset with fixed character cell size (monospace, Courier New) |
| H1 | Charset for headlines (titles) of the degreee 1. 1 is the largest headline. Usually sans serif 'Arial' font. |
| ..H6 | Charset for headlines (titles) of the degreee 6. 6 is the smallest headline. |
Formatting a text always requires formatting elements. Many editor programs are 'hiding' these elements from the user. This is good for newbies who are not formatting or using just some few styles. But this is difficult for professionals who are combining style elements or have special requirements.
Iris does this all in a special way: You can display just the 'plain text' but also the 'full HTML' and additionally the 'formatting elements'. Then you can easily see what is hidden and where. Here now a list of the formatting elements:
| Text blocks | A textblock are consecutive letters and spaces as long they are not seperated by formatting elements. Such text blocks can be labelled with a frame. A textblock appears in blue color while editing. |
| Spaces | Spaces are usually invisible. This makes cursor positioning difficult - and for small fonts it is often hard to see whether a space is set or not. IRIS can display spaces as centrered blue dots. Please keep in mind that HTML does not support double spaces within normal text (normal paragraph)! |
| Ø | Slashed zero - shows an empty text block (empty line) |
| <- (Hook_left) |
Shows an enforced line break (<br>). This is NOT a paragraph! |
| ¶ (Paragraph) |
Shows the end of a paragraph. The end of a paragraph results always in some vertical space to the next line! |
| -! (Hook_top) |
Show start and end of a text style (underline, italic, bold, pre) |
| « << |
double arrow left - shows an automatic line break because the right border is reached. |
| Line | with # number: shows a page feed. Enforced by <pagefeed> or automatically because a printer/A4 page is full. |
| ----------------- |
end