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Introduction *

Report Maker allows teachers to create pupil reports and Record of Achievements (ROA). The reports are generated from a 'database' of statements, which can be customised to suit the individual teacher. Report Maker enables reports to be

generated very quickly and easily. Used in conjunction with your usual word processor Report Maker can produce very professional looking, and sounding reports.

Report Maker features a main text box where, your report is composed, and 6 visible statement boxes from which 1 of 4 statements can be chosen (see above). An example statement file is included with the main program but it is best to create and customise your own statement file. Each statement file contains 180 statement boxes each containing 4 statements. When a report is complete it can be copied and pasted into a word processor for printing. It will be clear when you give the program a go!

The operation of the program is described below; this should be a good starting point for both experienced Report Maker users and those new to the program. If you have any suggestions for additions / corrections to this document don’t hesitate to email me. This description of the program falls into 3 sections. Firstly the ‘General Program Operation’, secondly a look at the ‘File Menu’ and lastly a look at the ‘Options menu’.

The basic functionality of the program is very simply. The object of the program is to make it easy to create report statements for pupils. The most difficult part will be creating the statements, which form the basis of your reports. It is worth spending sometime creating your statements, these could form the basis of your reports for years to come, so a little hard work at the beginning will be worth it in the long run. Statements are created by double clicking on the statement you want to change (down the right hand side of the screen). This will display the ‘Add new statement’ dialog box as shown in Figure 2.

This box displays the current statement in the box you double clicked in. This can be edited. Once you are happy with your new statement click on OK and the statement will be inserted into the statement box.

Once you are happy with your statements you are ready to create your reports. Reports are created in the ‘Main text box’ on the left-hand side of the screen. To add a statement to this box simply highlight the statement you want to add to the box (by clicking on it) then click on the arrow next to the statement box where you highlighted the statement. This will add the statement to the box as in Figure 3.

Normally the statement will be appended to the end of the last statement in the main text box but the statement can be added anywhere in the main text box by placing the cursor wherever you want in the box, statements are added at the cursor position.

Report Maker v3 contains many new features, these are described along with old functionality below. For details on specific changes between different versions see the file ‘new.txt’ included with the Report Maker program. As described above Report Maker consists of a series of statement boxes. These are organised in groups of 18 statements boxes. Any 6 boxes are visible at any one time so there are 3 ‘pages’ of statements per statement group. Figure 4 shown below shows how the statement groups are organised. The are 10 statement groups each consisting of 3 pages of statements (Figure 4). Each group of statements can be given a name in the ‘Set Name’ box, this name will be shown as a hint if the mouse is held over the button for that statement set. You can advance from one statement set to another using the Previous / Next page button (

Figure 1

). When you advance from page 3 of a statement set you will be placed in the first page of the next set; similarly clicking on the previous page button when you are on page one of a statement set will take you to page 3 of the previous set.

New to Version 3 of Report Maker is the status bar (Figure 6). This bar displays the hints. You can read much longer statements in the status bar than can be seen in the statement boxes.

Statements and entire statement boxes can be copied and pasted from one place to another. New ‘Blank’ statement boxes can also be added to your existing statements. The popup menu shown in Figure 7 is displayed by clicking on the right mouse button when the cursor is over the statement box you are interested in. Statements can be copied in a group, i.e. all 4 statements in a box and pasted into another box. This is done using the ‘Copy box’ and ‘Paste’ option in the menu shown in Figure 7. Single statements can also be copied and pasted using the ‘Copy statement’ option of the popup menu. This option will only be available if a statement in the box where you right clicked is highlighted. The ‘Insert box’ option will insert a statement box with ‘Blank’ entries in.

When using the insert and paste options of the popup menu you will be prompted with the dialog box shown in Figure 8. If you choose ‘overwrite statements’ the box where you clicked will be overwritten with the contents of the clipboard. If you choose shift statements down the statements below the one you clicked on will all move down one box and you will lose the content of the final statement box on page 3 of that set of statements. If you choose shift statements up the statements above the one you clicked on will all move up one box and you will lose the content of the first statement box on page 1 of that set of statements. You will be prompted with dialog box Figure 9 when using either the ‘shift up / down’ options. You can also edit statements using the top option in the drop down menu. Statements can also be moved by using the drag and drop facility. Highlight a statement and click and hold the left mouse button down on the statement. Move the mouse to the statement you want to replace and release the mouse button.

Once the report has been generated in the main text box the ‘Copy and Paste’ button should be chosen, this can be found below the main text box. This button copies the text from the main text box onto the windows clipboard, from here the text can be pasted into your word processor, where you can put the finishing touches to the text and print out your statements. As well as copying to the clipboard the program has an advanced feature when used in conjunction with Microsoft Word. This advanced feature is called smart paste and allows you to tell report maker exactly where in a document you would like text to be pasted. This option is described below.

This feature only works in conjunction with Microsoft Word 97 or a later version of word. It allows you to specify the exact position you want certain text in the main text box to be pasted in a Word document. This works by using markers called bookmarks in Word and Report Maker. Defining bookmarks in Word is easy just follow the instructions below when you are in your Word document :-

1. Click where you want to insert a bookmark.

2. On the Insert menu, click Bookmark.

3. Under Bookmark name, type or select a name.

Once you have defined your bookmarks you should save your file, this will be your master template file. The bookmarks will then be embedded in your document (you can remove them if you choose to). You may want to make this file read only at this point. You can do this using Windows Explorer. Start Windows Explorer and find the document where you have defined your bookmarks. Right click on the file and choose the properties option on the menu. This will display a dialog box similar to that shown in Figure 10 below.

Ensure the Read-only attribute is check as in Figure 10. To make any changes to the file follow the above instructions and uncheck the Read-only attribute.

Once you have defined your bookmarks in Word you will need to set corresponding bookmarks in Report Maker. These bookmarks must have the same name as those you have defined in your Word document. In report maker your bookmarks have the following format :- {bookmark_name}

I.e. they start with { proceeded by the bookmark name and ended by }. Bookmarks must be on their own separate line. If you are using the smart paste functionality any text on the same line as a bookmark will be ignored as will any text preceding the first bookmark. An example is shown in Figure 12 below.

The above text contains 4 bookmarks, i.e. goals, achievements, organisation and summary. When the user clicks on the ‘Copy and Paste’ button Report Maker will detect these bookmarks and you will be asked if you want to use the smart paste facility. If you choose ‘Yes’ you will then be shown the word control panel, this is shown Figure 13 below.

This should be used to launch word and open the file that you want to paste the text into. You must open Word using the ‘Launch Word’ (and not your normal method) otherwise Report Maker will not be able to carry out the paste operation. If you already have Word open it would be wise to close it before using this facility. Once Word has been opened via Report Maker it will not be necessary to launch it again, i.e. it will stay open and connected to Report Maker until you close Report Maker. Once you have opened a file you will be able to click on the ‘Smart Paste’ button. This will check that the bookmarks in your document match the bookmarks in the Report Maker. If there are bookmarks in Report Maker that cannot be found in the Word document you will be told about them and given the opportunity to quit or continue the paste operation. If all the bookmarks in Report Maker match bookmarks in your Word file all the text will be pasted in at the corresponding bookmarks. At this stage you may want to print out the word file or save the file with a new file name so your original template file is not overwritten.

If you use this option frequently it would be wise to store your bookmarks in your statements as shown in Figure 14 below. That way you don’t have to type in the bookmark names every time.

Alternatively you could store your bookmark names in a text file. This file could be loaded into the main text box using the option ‘Open Maintext Box’ described below. You could then open this file and use the mouse to click in the below the appropriate bookmark for the statements you are working on.

This menu gives you options for various file type operations, most of these should be familiar to you if you’ve used a windows word processor. All the options are described, in turn, below.

This option will create a new file for you, all the statements will be marked ‘Blank’ thus allowing you to use this as the basis for a completely new set of statements. This option has the shortcut keys Ctrl+n

This option allows you to load an existing report file. All files in the current directory with a filename *.rep will be displayed in the open dialog box, as below. This option has the shortcut keys Ctrl+O

The current set of statements can be written to disk for later use with this option. If you use the name of an existing report file then the older file will be overwritten. This option has the shortcut keys Ctrl+S

If you have used a version of Report Maker, prior to Version 3 then you might find this option useful. Version 3 allows each file to hold up to 180 statement boxes, this is 10 times the previous amount (see Figure 4). Statements are organised into 10 groups, each of these groups has 3 pages of statements. You might want to keep all your statements for a year groups in one file, where previously you have had a file for each year. This can be done using this option. Choose the import option and click on the statement group (Figure 17) you want to replace with the old Report Maker file. If the file contains less than 72 lines of statements the rest of the statement group will be set to ‘Blank’. You can also import text files, to a maximum of 72 lines. This option has the shortcut keys Ctrl+I

This option allows a file to be loaded into the main text box, on the left hand side of the screen. The default file extension used for this option is txt, i.e. a text file.

This option allows a file to be saved from the main text box, on the left hand side of the screen. The default file extension used for this option is txt, i.e. a text file.

This option gives you details on the registration process and allows you to enter your registration code. This option will show the screen shown in Figure 18 below.

This exits Report Maker, if you have any unsaved changes to the current report file then you will be prompted to save these changes.

This option allows you to change the font of the statements and the text in the main text box. Any changes you make to the font will be lost when you exit from the program. This option has the shortcut keys Ctrl+F

This dialog box allows you to set the main program options. These options define the basic operation of Report Maker. Each option is described below :-

This option allows you to move a highlighted statement from the statement boxes (on the right hand side of the screen) into the main text box with a single click. In normal operation a statement is moved by highlighting it then clicking on the appropriate arrow . When you are in fast add mode the arrows are hidden and statements are moved with a single click. Fast add is useful once you have set up your statements and you want to create the reports.

This option puts a line break (return character) in after each statement is added to the main text box. If this option is not checked new statements added to the main text box will be appended to the current line. (statements are actually added at the cursor)

This option allows hints to be displayed. Hints are displayed for just about every object on the screen (including buttons and check boxes). Hints are displayed when the mouse is held over an object.

This option when used in conjunction with the show hints option, above, will display a highlighted sentence in the current statement box as a hint. This is useful for reading sentences which are longer than the width of the statement box. Long sentences can also be viewed in the status bar at the very bottom of the screen (Figure 6).

This option does exactly what it says! Spaces between statement can be achieved in two ways, either by inserting them into your statements or using this option.

This option allows you to start Report Maker with the same file report file. The name of the report file is defined below this option using the browse button. As Report Maker v3 holds 180 statement boxes it may be easy to keep all your statements in one file and always initialise Report Maker to this file.

Clicking this button will save all the settings you have defined on the current options screen, these settings will be applied next time Report Maker is run (The settings are held in the rep.ini file). If your current settings are not saved then they will only apply to the current session of Report Maker and will be lost when the program is closed.

This button applies the current options to Report Maker and returns you to the main program.

These options are new to Report Maker v3. In previous versions separate statements had to be maintained for male and females, due to the differences in he / she, his / hers, etc. This is no longer the case. Gender-neutral statements can be defined using codes for gender specific words (see Figure 23 for a list of the codes). Once these codes have been placed in your statements you can set the gender of the current statements to male or female depending on the pupil. This is done using the dialog box below. These options also allow you to specify if you want to display the pupils name in the statements (replacing the code * for the name).

These gender options are also available on the main screen of Report Maker, see Figure 1 for the latest screen shot.

The codes used in the statements for gender specific words are shown below and can be found in the program using the ‘Codes’ tab within the gender dialog box. These codes should be inserted into statements instead of the words he/she etc. The pupils name can be displayed in the statements using the * symbol. The name will be displayed if this option is set as above.

Figure 22 below shows an example of statements when the gender codes have been inserted. This would be seen if the ‘Show gender codes in statements’ was chosen in Figure 20. These statements are transformed as in Figure 23 when the options ‘Display statements in female gender’ and ‘Show names in statements’ options are chosen, these options are shown in Figure 20.

This option allows you to edit and save a list of names, this would normally be a class of pupils. An example of the is shown

Once a list of names has been entered the list should be saved using the save option. These names are accessible from the main report maker screen using the Next and Previous buttons. The gender of the statements will automatically be set when using the next and previous buttons.

This option gives details on the program version and contact details for me.

Once downloaded you will have to unzip report maker. You can do this using winzip. Winzip can be downloaded from http://www.winzip.com or http://www.winfiles.com. Winzip is also available on the cover mounted cd’s of some computer magazines, PC-PRO for example, this will save you downloading it from the web site. You should have a temporary directory on your C-drive where you can download winzip. This can be found in using windows explorer, see below for details.

You should create a temp directory of your own under the main C-drive, also shown above. This is better than using the directory temp under windows since windows won’t touch the files in c:\temp whereas it may cleanup all the files in c:\windows\temp each time your computer is rebooted. Anyway this just gives you an example of how and where to download winzip and subsequently report maker. Once winzip is downloaded double click on the downloaded executable file. Winzip will then automatically install.

For more detailed instructions on downloading and install winzip see the web pages :-http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~thicks/WinZip/InstallWinZip.html