Formatting textual report items

Chapter 7 Reports

Formatting textual report items

You can access the report items Format dialog in any of the following ways:

Select one or more text or list report items in the left-hand Available Items pane, and select Report→Format in order to set default formatting for them.

Each instance of the item that you subsequently add to the right-hand Report Items pane will have this same formatting, but your changes will not affect any report items already in the Report Items pane.
Select one or more text or list report items in the right-hand Report Items pane, and select Report→Format to change their formatting.

Available items

Some report items contain more than one text element. You can format each separately or use the ctrl or shift keys to select several at once:

Report Item	Text Selections
Card items	The following selections are available for card items (lists of properties), which are output in table format: Title - Title of the item, eg "Card of the Table" Label - Property name on a list of properties, eg "Table Code" Text – Value of a property, eg "EMPLOYEE"
CRUD Matrix items	The following selections are available for CRUD Matrix items, which are output in table format: Matrix title – Title of the item, eg "CRUD Matrix " Matrix row and column – Resource and process name, eg " Check item (process name in rows)" and " Stock (resource name in columns)" Matrix text – CRUD value, eg " RU "
Model- and object-dependent items	The following selections are available for model- and object-dependent items, which are output in text format: Title – Title of the item, eg " Table Description " Text – Text of the description, annotation, or script, eg "This table describes different employee characteristics "
List items	The following selections are available for list items, which are output in table format: Title – Title of the item, eg " List of Indexes " Column Header – Heading of column, eg " Code " Text – Value in the column, eg " PK_EMPLOYEE "
Title page	The following selections are available for the title page, which is output in text format: Title – Title of the report, eg "OOM Report" Optional Fields – Text of the author, date, version or summary, eg " VB, 09.15.99, draft, report with lists only " For more information about the title page, see Report property sheet Title tab.
Table of contents	The following selections are available for the table of contents, which is output in text format: TOC title – Title of the table of contents, eg " Table of contents " Level x– Text of the different hierarchy levels in the table of contents, eg "2.1 Model information "

Formatting tables of contents
Select the levels to display from the Show levels list beneath the Available items pane of the Format dialog box. To define the levels to be shown in the TOC of an HTML report, see Report property sheet HTML Format tab.

Font tab

The Format dialog Font tab allows you to specify a font, style, size, and effects for the text elements that you select in the left-hand Available items list.

Paragraph tab

The Format dialog Paragraph tab allows you to specify indentation, spacing, and alignment for the text elements that you select in the left-hand Available items list.

Border tab

The Format dialog Border tab allows you to specify elements of a frame around the text elements that you select in the left-hand Available items list. The following border formatting is available:

Option	Description
Left	Inserts a vertical line to the left of all the occurrences of the selected text elements.
Right	Inserts a vertical line to the right of all the occurrences of the selected text elements.
Top	Inserts an horizontal line on top of all the occurrences of the selected text elements.
Bottom	Inserts an horizontal line at the bottom of all the occurrences of the selected text elements.
Box	[card and list items only] Inserts a rectangle around all the occurrences of the selected text elements. For card items, inserts a rectangle that groups all the occurrences of Text Label (property names) including Text (corresponding property values). For list items, inserts a rectangle that groups all the occurrences of Column Header (heading of column, example Code), and also a rectangle that groups all the occurrences of Text (value in the column), if you have previously highlighted each of these text selections in the Available Items pane.
Width	Specifies the line width for the Left, Right, Top and Bottom frame options
Box width	Specifies the line width of the box frame
From text	Specifies the amount of space from text to top, bottom, left, and right border

Tab tab

The Format dialog Tab tab allows you to specify tab positions and alignment for the text elements that you select in the left-hand Available items list. This formatting is particularly useful for the layout of headers and footers (see Modifying report section headers and footers).

The following tab formatting is available:

Option	Description
Tab stop position	Specifies the measurement for a tab stop
Default tab stops	Specifies the default spacing between tab stops
Alignment	Specifies how text is to be aligned at the tab stop. To change the alignment for an existing tab stop, click it in the Tab Stop Position box, and then click the new alignment option