The Design Format Menu
Format Menu Overview
The Format Menu Tab gives access to general report
attributes. It is also where you set up PHP custom code for manipulation of data prior to reporting.
Format Menu Attributes
Report Title
The name of the report. This is the text that appears across the
top of the screen in Design, Prepare and Execute modes.
Report Description
The help text that describes what the report does. This is
presented to the user on the Prepare screen. A good description will
include what sort of data the report outputs and how best to provide
criteria. For example, some reports may return too much data, so it is
good to advise the user of sensible criteria selections.
You can type in HTML tags within this section in order provide links, and attractive formatting. You could even generate a screen shot of the report output and present this within this box.
Page Size
For PDF Reports only. Indicates the size of page that will be
generated. Currently supports sizes such as A4, A3, US-Letter.
Page Width (HTML)
For HTML Reports only. The width of the page specified as an HTML/CSS width value. This will be
used within the "width" CSS style of the <BODY> tag that
controls the page size. To specify a value in pixels specify suffix of px, to specify a percentage value add a percent sign. The default is 100% making the page fill the browser window.
Orientation
For PDF Reports only. Indicates whether reports will be generated
in portrait or landscape format.
Top Margin
For PDF Reports only. Indicates the amount of space to be left at
the top of each report page. Values can be expressed in cm, mm. So a value
of 1cm or 10mm will provide a margin of 1 centimetre. If only a number
is entered then the value is measures in points. A sheet of A4 is 842pt
x 595pt.
Bottom Margin
For PDF Reports only. Indicates the amount of space to be left at
Bottom report pages below the page footers. See Top
Margin for a description of margin measurements.
Right Margin
For PDF Reports only. Indicates the amount of space to be left on
the right hand side of report output. See Top
Margin for a description of margin measurements.
Left Margin
For PDF Reports only. Indicates the amount of space to be left on
the left hand side of the report output. See Top
Margin for a description of margin measurements.
Font
For PDF Reports only. Indicates the font to be used in the report
output. Valid values are Helvetica, Arial, Courier and Times.
Font Size
For PDF Reports only. Indicates the font size used in the report
output.
Custom Source Code
Enter here PHP code that is executed before the main report query.
This is generally used to perform preparatory work that for use by the
main query. For example, this code may generate and populate temporary tables based
on the criteria the user has entered, and this may be then linked in by the main report query.
report query.
For full detailed discussion of adding custom source code, see the chapter Custom Source Code.
Display Details
Indicates whether user should have the option of whether to hide
the detail section of the report. If this is set to Show then the
Display Detail check box will appear in prepare
mode.
Display Graph
For reports with graphs, this option indicates whether user should
have the option of whether to hide the graph output. If this is set to
Show then the Display Graph check box will appear
in prepare mode.
Display Grid
To display report results as sortable searchable grids set this option to show. Setting the option to default uses the default setting. The defaut on installation is to turn off grids but the default can be turned by setting the dynamic_grid paramter in the reportico run.php script.
Sortable Grid
Choose whether your grid columns should be sortable by clicking the column header
Searchable grid
Choose whether a text search box should appear for searching the grid
Pageable grid
Choose whether to have paging on each results grid.
Grid Page Size
Choose how many lines to show in a pageable grid ( default is 10 )
