Building your Settings File

Report Magic for Analog Settings

Report Magic for Analog's settings are separated into at least five sections, statistics, navigation and website and the graphs, reports and related sections. The statistics section covers general settings for creating the reports. The navigation section tells Report Magic for Analog how to format and display the navigation page or naviagtion menu (if on the same page). The website section has some options for linking website data and feedback. The graphs section allows you to define many formatting options for graphs and the reports section provide formatting settings for how the report pages should look. You can also create a section for each specific report to customize settings for that report alone.

Below are sample settings for the first three section and a description of what each setting means. The graphs, reports and related sections are covered on a separate page.

statistics Section

[statistics]

File_In = report.dat

Frame_File_Out = index.html

Frame_Border = 0

No_Robots = 1

Log_File = rmagic.log

Always_Quit = 1

Language = en

Verbose = NWE

Include = standard.ini

Format = XHTML 1.0

File_In

This is the location of the computer readable output from Analog. It can include a path name (including a drive letter or network path). This is relative to the directory from which Report Magic for Analog was run.

The special filename '-' can be used to tell Report Magic to read the input from the standard input (STDIN) (i.e. your keyboard or a pipe, '|', on a command line). This option supports the %infile% and %dateformat% codes descibed under File_Out in the [reports] section, below.

Frame_File_Out (Optional)

This is the name of the frameset page. It no longer uses a path name or drive letter. (You can put a path in here, but it will be ignored. The path specified in report_File_Out, below, is used for all files.) This option supports the %infile% and %dateformat% codes descibed under File_Out in the [reports] section, below. If no value is given, and Report Magic is producing a frameset, then this will defaut to 'index.html'.

Frame_Border (Optional)

This sets the width of the separator between the navigation and report frames. If you set this to '0' then no separator will be drawn (and the frames will not be resizable).

No_Robots (Optional)

This option, if set to 1, will add a META tag to each output file to tell robots not to index the files.

Log_File (Optional)

This option gives the name of a file to which Report Magic will send all messages (errors or notices). This is useful for automated jobs, especially on a Mac platform where you don't have redirection. By default, if no logfile is given (if this option is not used), all notification and error messages are written to STDERR (your console screen). Errors are appended to (added to the end of) the logfile. The name of the logfile can include the %infile% and %dateformat% codes descibed under File_Out in the [reports] section, below.

Always_Quit (Optional, Mac only)

For the Mac platform only, this option tells Report Magic to quit the program whenever any error occurs. (Normally it leaves the "console" window up so you can see any messages.) This is especially useful when running Report Magic as a scheduled task with the 'cron' utility (or other task scheduler). If you are using the logging option (above) it will also quit the program on errors and on completion, so this is redundant when logging is enabled. This option has no effect on non-Mac platforms.

Language (Optional)

This will set the language to be used for the current report. Valid languages are listed in the lang directory under the directory where you installed Report Magic. There is a directory for each set of language files. So, for example, to set the report to German you would use 'de'. Rembemer that if you are setting the language in Report Magic for a set of reports to also set the langauge in the Analog config file or your Daily Summary will show every day as Sunday.

Note If you are running Analog 3.x and want the output in German, rename the file lang/de/lang_3.ini to lang/de/lang.ini.

Verbose (Optional)

This allows you to control what kind of messages Report Magic tells when running. The valid values are N for Notices, W for Warnings and E for errors. The default is to output all. To tell Report Magic to be absolutely quiet use the keyword NONE.

Include (Optional)

You can include the contents of another setting file in a given file. This setting takes the name of a settings file whose values will be included. The settings in the current file will override anything in the included file. This is an easy way for an ISP to include a standard file and customize just the necessary settings for each client. This option supports the %infile% and %dateformat% codes descibed under File_Out in the [reports] section, below.

Format (Optional)

This specifies the output file format for the reports. Currently undertood formats are 'XHTML 1.0' (which converts reports formating choices into CSS style sheets) and 'HTML 3.2' (which uses lots of tags). Default is 'XHTML 1.0'.

[navigation]

File_Out = navfile.html

BG_Color = #FFFFFF

Background = images/flag_bg.gif

Font_Color = #000000

Font = Verdana, Arial

Bullet_Image = images/bar1.gif

Stylesheet = styles.css

[website]

Title = My Web Site Report

Webmaster = webmaster@flaglink.com

Base_URL = http://www.flaglink.com

Company_Logo = logofile.htm