General Procedure

General Procedure

The basis for the generation of text are one or more pieces of text (single Microsoft Word documents) which are assembled subsequently to a document using decision table functions. Each one of these text pieces may contain any number of variables suitable for ePOS parameter which are then substituted by the current values from within the interface.

The entirety of Word’s functionality can be employed for the text formatting. The only limitations have their reasons within Word itself. All format and document templates, for example, have to be matched with the first piece of text as word does not adopt these when inserting a text document into an existing document.

For details about the generation of often-used formatting options see generation of text pieces.

The text blocks can most easily be generated from ’real’ texts, whereas the specific data is substituted by the parameters. The text blocks can carry an arbitrary name, but have to be assigned in the directory \ettext\forms below the ePOS file path. The name of the block of text has to be unambiguous for all applications.

The variables in the text blocks are modeled by the Word DocVariable :

Please note: The curly brackets represent the Word field definition; <ParameterName> must be replaced by the appropriate ePOS parameter name, e.g.:

The field function DocVariable is inserted through the menu function ’Insert – Field…’ in Word.

Please note: The parameters used must be defined as global in the logic.

The substitution of these DocVariable fields is conducted directly upon insertion of a text block (p$TDV:SMPAPI:EtTxBast). However, only parameters of the last block can be set each time.

The formatting of the parameter values is also controlled through the text block. The format can be defined using the "\#"-command, e.g.:

The format command for parameter from the parameter table is exclusively used with the function p$TDV:SMPAPI:EtTxTxP.

After completion of the text generation, all Word field functions are updated, so that, for example, the table of contents and all texts in the page headers and footers are current.

All component parameters that haven’t been substituted or could not be substituted are deleted from the component (if the ePOS test execution is not turned on).

The following issues could be the reason that a component parameter is not substituted:

Parameter was not activated upon insertion of the componentThe parameter was in the EMPTY or UNDEF stateSee also:

Technical constraints of the interface