Synapse Directives for RebGUI

Discussion in 'Documentation & Training Resources' started by Jerry, May 13, 2009.

  1. Jerry

    Jerry Administrator Staff Member

    Graham, could you give a little discussion about Synapse Directives in RebGUI, as I can't find much documentation about them. The wiki just mentions the Synapse Directives:
    • calculator
    • sql-database
    • imaging
    • laboratory

    However, the following have been added that I have found:
    • no-commas
    • letter
    • assessment
    • injection
    • procedure
    These Synapse Directives are apparently not case sensitive from what I have seen.

    I discovered that "letter" inserts the text from a GUI template with carriage returns between each line, which is what I was after (not a long line of text separated by commas or not). Is there any downside to using "letter" in a "regular" GUI, i.e., is "letter" tracked somewhere? Where are the others tracked (i.e, may not be obvious by the title)? How does sql-database work? I see it's usually combined with calculator, but not in the case of "disease" templates like diabetes and PMR.
  2. Graham

    Graham Developer Staff Member

    A GUI template is just a bunch of widgets.

    We need to extract text from those widgets, format it in some way, and also extract some meaning from it for other uses.

    So, the directives are there for that purpose ... it may have been a bad design decision, but currently the text formatting is tied to what is done with the text.

    Most of the directives take information from the GUI and insert it into the superbill as well as allowing the ability to print specific forms. This applies to imaging, laboratory, injection, and procedure. The calculator creates a calculate button on the GUI and processes any maths embedded in any of the fields. The sql-database takes the results of any outcome fields and inserts them into the numeric results for that patient. Assessment places a diagnosis in the superbill.

    No-commas is a text formatting option which is non-exclusive.

    Letter is also a text formatting option but is exclusive ie. can not be used with the other directives as otherwise you would insert the text twice into the note.

    I should perhaps look at separating text formatting from text disposal.
  3. Jerry

    Jerry Administrator Staff Member

    So the directive "letter" is just a means of text formatting, usually used with patient letters, but using the letter directive doesn't place the document it's at the end of in a list or make that document do anything special?
  4. Graham

    Graham Developer Staff Member

    All it does is format by adding a newline after each radiogroup item.

  5. Graham

    Graham Developer Staff Member

    I've been looking at this again, and maybe special text formatting directives are the wrong way to go about all this. It requires a lot of logic to be embedded in the processing of the widgets.

    The alternative is to create widgets which specify how the text should be handled; we already have some instances of this ... eg. check-group text is normally broken by newlines, whereas hcheck-group is separated by commas.

  6. Jerry

    Jerry Administrator Staff Member

    I'm not sure about directives. Being forced into a certain type of format for given type of document could be good or bad, given the level of knowledge and inclination/needs of the user. Maybe just leave directives as is, but invent some more widgets that allow a greater degree of control over formatting if the user needs it?
  7. Graham

    Graham Developer Staff Member

    This is pretty straight forward.

    So, we already have a vertical and horizontal version of the check-group. So, a vertical version of the radio-group is a definite candidate.

    Others?

  8. Jerry

    Jerry Administrator Staff Member

    How does vertical vs horizontal orientation of the check boxes or radio buttons affect the printed format to the consult?

    Is it possible to use check boxes or radio buttons to place text inside of an area box (as an editing box) before the text is inserted into the consult?
  9. Graham

    Graham Developer Staff Member

    Sorry, horizontal and vertical refer to the text output, not their gui orientation.

    No, can't do that .. ie. modify text area boxes.

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