Repeat Signage V5 help

Formatting - Format tab

Help home

Repeat Signage digital signage software


You can use this tab to optionally change the way that your text or data collected from a database is displayed.   It doesn't have to be a database.  If you are collecting text from a text file that another computer system has outputted, then you can use this to alter the way the information is displayed.  The different format options are:


TEXT

You are telling Repeat Signage that this data is text.  This gives you the following additional options for formatting as text.  For example, the text:

the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog

would be displayed as follows with these options:

UPPER CASE THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPED OVER THE LAZY DOG
LOWER CASE the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog
SENTENCE CASE The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog
UPPER FIRST LETTERS The Quick Brown Fox Jumped Over The Lazy Dog

The SENTENCE CASE makes the first letter of each sentence a capital letter.

You can also add a prefix and/or suffix to text and any of the other data types by selecting the 'Additional' tab on this page.


NUMBER, PERCENT, or CURRENCY

These options tell Repeat Signage that your data is a number, which allows you then to choose how a number is displayed.

Decimal places - This is the amount of digits displayed after the decimal point.  For example, a number of 23 is displayed differently depending on the number of decimal places specified:

23 0 decimal places
23.0 1 decimal place
23.00 2 decimal places

Leading zeros - This is the minimum number of digits you want to display as number as.  For example, bank account numbers are often 8 digits long such as 97327734.  A bank account number of 633000 (6 digits) would be displayed as 00633000 for consistency.  So when you format a number like this you need to specify 8 leading zeros which will make sure the final number gets padded with extra zeros at the front of the number if required.  Leading zeros are only added if needed.  Another example with 23:

23 0 leading zeros
23 1 leading zero
23 2 leading zeros
023 3 leading zeros
0023 4 leading zeros


Currency symbol - Either select an entry from the list such as $, £, €, or ¥, or type you own one.  So selecting the dollar symbol with 1234.00, for example would be displayed as $1234.00.  If you wanted to display 1234 like '1234USD' then use the suffix box on the Additional tab on this page instead and specify a suffix as 'USD'.

Thousands separator - Displays longer numbers such as 1234567, with separators to give 1,234,67 instead, which makes reading them easier. 

Manually type a format code - This tick box is for advanced users so that you can enter a custom format code.  See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dwhawy9k(v=vs.90).aspx.  Please feel free to contact us if you need any help

Percent - If you select 'Percent' then numbers are converted to percentages.  For example, 0.25 would be displayed as 25%.  You have all the other number options available as well.


DATE/TIME

This option is telling Repeat Signage that the information is either a date, a time, or a date and time combined.  It formats text such as '12/12/2014' as a date, '12:54', etc, as a time, etc.  However, if you text is not a date such as 'Hello' then no formatting will be applied and your text will just be displayed as is.

Select date/time format - You can pick 'TIME', 'DATE', etc, from the list and see how the current date/time previews.  This puts a code such as 'dd MMMM yyyy' in the  'Date/time format box'.  This then formats the date or time based on this code.  These are programming codes which determine how the current date or time is displayed.  These codes are complex but we have left this open to allow maximum flexibility.   To format a code other than one of the standard ones, it is easiest to click on each of the types in turn, such as 'TIME', 'DATE', 'DATE IN WORDS', etc and look at the codes needed to display in a format you need common codes that you may need are:

Code Description
   
HH Hour number such as 08
mm Minutes number such as 45
ss Seconds number such as 23
dd Day number such as 30
dddd Day name such as Tuesday
MM Month number such as 01
MMMM Month name such as January
yyyy Year number such as 2010

You can also use separates such as '/' or ':' characters, commas (,) and spaces to display a date or time in the format required.

A programmers reference for these codes is available at (but this isn't for the faint hearted):

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/8kb3ddd4.aspx

Optional culture code - If this is left blank then it uses the computers default culture which depends on control panel settings, which is most likely to be UK or US English.  This is only useful when displaying the names of days or months in non-English languages such as French, Spanish, etc.

For example, the format code (see above) for displaying the name of the month is:

MMMM

If the culture code is set to en-UK or en-US and the month is 'June' then we get:

June

If we used the Italian culture code of it-IT then we would get:

guiugno

Code Description
   
en-UK English (British)
en-US English (US)
fr-FR French (France)
es-ES Spanish (Spain)
es-MX Spanish (Mexico)


For other countries, a list of these codes is available at:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee797784(CS.20).aspx


BOOLEAN

A boolean value is True or False.  'True or False' can also be 'Yes or No', 'On or Off', '1 or 0', 'Right or Wrong', etc.   However, there is a third type called Null which means that neither True nor False has been selected.  You can either select an option from the list or type in your own text to display on True or False.

Treat null values as false - This is ticked by default.  This means that if the text is empty then it will display the text you have specified for False.  However, you may want to display a different text on Null such as 'N/A', 'Unknown', or just leave it blank.  Tick this box and then the 'Null display value' box is shown so that you can specify your own text