We are going to
start with Build Mode. And in Build Mode,
I am going to start from scratch in ProcessBook.
I have the ProcessBook application open
with no work book or display
file open at this time. We just have the application
running. Now in ProcessBook,
when you create something you have one of two
choices if you are starting from step one. You can either
create a ProcessBook work book file and
then populate it with entries--
these are sometimes referred to as
displays and they can be other items as well. Or you can
create individual display files which have a
.PDI extension. And those are simply kept in a folder
somewhere on your file system. Now
ProcessBook does not really care which one
you use. The benefits of disadvantages
are all contained from an
organizational, or house keeping point of view.
If you are in the habit of sharing
your displays with other people,
it could very well be more convenient
for you to keep your display files as independent
pages in a folder somewhere and in that way you do not have to share
your entire work book. However if you do not share things,
or you do not use
your displays with things like
web clients, then it might be advantageous for you to keep them all in
one place. And in that case, a work book may work very well
for you. So it really depends on the
organization and how you want to setup your
display files. One note
just like any other Windows application,
if there is an * next to the name of the file, it simply
means there have been changes that have not been
saved since the file was
opened. We are going to look at the
ProcessBook work book since it is the more complex of the
two structures. I have got ProcessBook open
with no structures available. It's
just the application running with no displays
or work books open. And I want to create a new work book
for myself. So I will select file and
new. And at this point, the new dialogue box opens and the
default is ProcessBook
entry. However I do not have a work book to create entries
within, so I am going to select the
ProcessBook.PIW file. And
I am going to call this CBT
Demo Workbook. And I will click
OK and what we get is a blank
ProcessBook work book. Even though there looks like a page
here, there is nothing really here yet. It's just an
empty container. And so what I want to do is
create a simple entry on this work book that is
going to be the heading for my first page. Again, I will select
file and new. This
time I will select ProcessBook Entry
and click OK. And I want a type of
entry called text. Now I am going to
call this page one for my label and
click OK. And what you see if that
I have a text entry, the text entries are
denoted with no icon next to them. And because it's
a level one, I get page one.
Now at this point you can add
entries to this page or create additional
pages or add whatever you wish to this
work book. I am simply going to save
my work book to my desktop. Once I get my
work book established, I need to add things
to it. The most common entry that you are going to add
to a work book is a display file. The display
file is what you are going to be using most of the
time. In this case, I am going to select file and
new. And this is where you have to be very
careful. Most people assume because they want a display entry in
this work book, that they should select ProcessBook display
file. This is the wrong thing to select. Very often
people will create displays using this method
and then go into their work book and realize there
is nothing in it. Because by selecting
this third item down, ProcessBook Display File,
you are in fact created a stand alone
display file, not a display within this
work book. To create a display within the work book,
leave the selection ProcessBook Entry checked and click
OK. At this point, you are going to want to
make sure display is checked, which it is.
And you are going to want to give
your display a label-- I am going to call
this Demo Display 1.
And I am going to click on level to make it
a level 2 and click OK. And you
can see I have got my display there. Now
I will save my changes. If you want to edit
this-- let's say I did not want to call this
Demo Display 1 and I wanted to call it just Display 1, I can simply go
into Build Mode and double
click on it. And that will give me the dialogue box that appears
there as well. I can change whatever
I wish at that point. Now if you make a
mistake in that series of
events and you end up creating another level
one entry--
I will call this
Mistake Display.
You will notice what you get
is a different page. You have got Mistake
Display and page one. Notice that it sandwiched
Mistake Display between page 1 and the display
that you wanted. So that really messed you up. So
what you need to do at this point is
go into outline mode, select view and outline.
And at this point, you can demote
the mistake display to the level that
you want. Or you can move your displays around and
reorder things. That's all
done in Outline Mode.
So when you go back to Book Mode, your displays are the way you want them.
To delete a display, you simply select
it and then
click clear and it will clear that display
out. So that's how you create a display
in a work book. One
of the nice features about ProcessBook
is it does give you short cuts in various instances. In
this case, if I want to add an element to an existing
work book, I simply make sure that I am in Build
Mode and I use the Insert menu. From this point, you can click on
Display, Text or Link OS command.
And it will bring up the dialogue box that you would have, or
narrowly arrived at from selecting
file, new and then ProcessBook
entry. So it will save you a few steps using the insert
menu from the menu bar.
Now there are other elements that we can create
here, even though they are less often used. And
those are found in the file, new, ProcessBook
entry menu. We can create
additional text areas if we
want at any level that we want to put a heading
in. Or we can click Link an Operating System Command.
And when you click Link OS Command,
what you need to do is browse to the element that you want
to put a link too. If you select a display
file, it will create a display link. If
you create another work book, it will create a link to that work
book. Or if you select OS Command,
you select OS Command
by pointing to a file,
an application file that your system can understand. So
for example, if I go to
my browse button and instead of cliking browse, I click on the little
arrow that points down, in display search,
I can search under
My Computer, for all of
the display files that might
be on my computer.
This may take a few moments, so
be patient with it. And we can see here that I have a
PDI file on my Desktop that
I can link to. I can call it
Audible Alarm and click
OK. And that will give me an audible
alarm linked to that PDI file in my
work book--
I can title it there and click
OK. And you notice that it does
open up the file. So I have got my audible alarm link in
there. You can link any operating system command,
any executable, any other work book, you
can link them all into your
work books.