Formatting, Colors and Styles

To draw attention to specific findings in your report, most macros will allow you to automatically change the font and color for specific text and/or table cells based on the value being returned. These options override any style that you have applied, for example Microsoft Word Styles or Table Styles, or CSS in HTML documents.

Determining the output type

In all the macros which output text, even in the [String:] macro, ReportMagic will try to interpret the output as:

A number
A date
Otherwise, it will consider the output to be a string

For example:

123 is interpreted as a number
2022-01-15 is interpreted as a date
ABC is interpreted as a string
123A is interpreted as a string
2022-01-15 00:00:01 is interpreted as a date
2022-01-qq 00:00:01 is interpreted as a string
123.456 is interpreted as a number
123.456.789 is interpreted as a string
123.456;789 is interpreted as a string

Tip: If you want to force ReportMagic to interpret numbers as strings, add to your macros the parameter: format=string

Determining output state

These interpreted values can then be compared to other values to determine whether the value is:

Fatal ("worst")
Critical
Error
Warning
Info or
Normal (the default, "best")

This is achieved by determining the worst that the following parameters reveal:

fatalAfter (dates only), fatalBefore (dates only), fatalEq, fatalGe, fatalGt, fatalIf, fatalLe, fatalLt and fatalNe
criticalAfter (dates only), criticalBefore (dates only), criticalEq, criticalGe, criticalGt, criticalIf, criticalLe, criticalLt and criticalNe
errorAfter (dates only), errorBefore (dates only), errorEq, errorGe, errorGt, errorIf, errorLe, errorLt and errorNe
warningAfter (dates only), warningBefore (dates only), warningEq, warningGe, warningGt, warningIf, warningLe, warningLt and warningNe
infoAfter (dates only), infoBefore (dates only), infoEq, infoGe, infoGt, infoIf, infoLe, infoLt andinfoNe

In these parameters:

After means "The output, interpreted as a date, is after"
Before means "The output, interpreted as a date, is before"
Eq means "The output is equal to"
Ge means "The output is greater than or equal to"
Gt means "The output is greater than"
Le means "The output is less than or equal to"
Lt means "The output is less than"
Ne means "The output is not equal to"

If no match is found, the output's state is determined to be the default "normal" state.

Applying a style

Once the output's state has been determined, ReportMagic can then apply styles to the output as follows:

If the macro is NOT in a table cell, the font color and style is changed to preset values.
If the macro IS in a table cell, different defaults apply, with the background colour being changed.

You can override these defaults with the following parameters:

fatalFontBackgroundColor
fatalFontBold
fatalFontColor
fatalFontSize
fatalTableCellBackgroundColor (only applies if the macro is in a table cell)
criticalFontBackgroundColor
criticalFontBold
criticalFontColor
criticalFontSize
criticalTableCellBackgroundColor (only applies if the macro is in a table cell)
errorFontBackgroundColor
errorFontBold
errorFontColor
errorFontSize
errorTableCellBackgroundColor (only applies if the macro is in a table cell)
warningFontBackgroundColor
warningFontBold
warningFontColor
warningFontSize
warningTableCellBackgroundColor (only applies if the macro is in a table cell)
infoFontBackgroundColor
infoFontBold
infoFontColor
infoFontSize
infoTableCellBackgroundColor (only applies if the macro is in a table cell)

normalFontBackgroundColor

normalFontBold

normalFontColor

normalFontSize

normalTableCellBackgroundColor (only applies if the macro is in a table cell)

Colors

Colors can refer to a named color or an HTML-encoded color

Note: 'transparent' is a valid color. Also, for any ReportMagic macro parameters that expect a color, assigning an empty string to that parameter means 'the parameter is not set'.

The transparent color is particularly useful for example to override the String macro's behaviour of setting the table cell color (when, e.g. criticalGe is set) rather than just the font color. In this case you could override that and prevent the cell being colored with:

[String:value=95, criticalGe=90, criticalFontColor=Red, criticalTableCellBackgroundColor=transparent]

The above example with transparent set, prevents the behaviour where you would have a red font on a red cell background.

Examples

Simple number in text

[String: value=1234, criticalGe=1000, fatalGt=1500, errorGt=500, criticalFontSize=20]

In this case, both the errorGt and criticalGe parameters match, but "critical" is considered worse than "error", so this is the state that is determined. The applied style is the usual changing of the font color to red, plus the additional modification of the font size to 20.

Date in a table cell

[String: value=2021-02-18, warningGt=2021-02-17]