Malvern Instruments Zetasizer Series, Основное руководство пользователя

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3.1 Introduction
The standard tables and reports provided with the Zetasizer system are produced by various
page and report programs. A page (or report) program is a “script” written in Malvern Page
Description Language (PDL), which allows selection of the display items, text, graphics, and font
and format of the displayed text.
Although Zetasizer provides you with a number of standard tables and reports for presenting
measurement data and results, you have the option to design your own tables and reports in
styles that suit your need.
This chapter describes the PDL language and program, and example of generating customised
table and report. See the Software Reference Manual for details on standard Zetasizer tables
and report.
3.2 Writing page description programs
A page description program is a special form of Zetasizer Basic program which only allows you
to access the Zetasizer data and results and display them in selected style and format. It cannot
be used to control certain operations of the Zetasizer as a normal Zetasizer Basic program would
do. Therefore, before attempting to write a table or report program you should familiar yourself
with the concepts of the Zetasizer Basic language. See chapter 2 for detailed description on
Zetasizer Basic variables, expressions and functions.
Like all Basic programs the execution of a page description program starts from the first line in
the program and ends when an End statement is reached or when the execution reaches the
last line of the program. The program stops when a programming error is encountered. Like
writing any program it is recommended to use comment lines to give brief description on the
program, so that the program is easy to read and debug should any errors occur. A comment
line starts with an apostrophe character (‘).
A table or report program should start by defining the area where the contents of the table or
report are to be placed. Once the display area is defined, text, lines and boxes can be drawn to
form a table, and the values of the Zetasizer data and results accessed and displayed. When
there are many items to be displayed, it is a good idea to separate the items into groups and
each group is drawn by a section of the program.
A table is drawn in the Table pane on the right hand size of the Malvern Zetasizer main window.
The size of a table is limited by the dimension of the computer screen. Although you can define
a table size larger than the size of the screen, you will need to use window scroll bars to move
the table around to allow you to view the contents. It is therefore recommended that the width of
a table does not exceed the width of the screen. All standard Zetasizer tables are half the screen
width.
Text, lines and boxes can be drawn at a location specified by (X,Y) co-ordinate on a table or
report. The co-ordinate has its origin at the top left corner of the display area. All dimensions in
the program are measured in millimetres (mm).
A page description program can be created or edited using the built-in Malvern page program
editor or any text editor. It is recommended, however, that the Malvern editor is used so that the
program can be tested while being edited.
To create a new program select the New command from the File menu in the Malvern Editor.
New automatically enters as a first line the Table command to allow you to give a title to the
Designing pages and reports MAN 0179
Page 3.1
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