Comment Tagging in Inmagic Genie

While changing reports in the Genie MyReports.config file, we encountered an unexpected invalid comment syntax error message. After checking the code and some investigation, we discovered that the character string -- (double-hyphen) is not allowed within comments in XML. According to the W3C Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Third Edition) specifications: For compatibility (with SGML), the string -- (double-hyphen) MUST NOT occur within comments.] What an esoteric topic you say? We discovered its very easy to come up against this in Genie. In our case we created a new Loans By Borrower report, and commented out the default report. The error arose because the character string -- is used four times in the default report, as header text before fields. Changing it to a single dash was all that was needed to remove the error. The -- character string in used in other reports as well.

Inmagic Genie for Firefox and non-IE browsers

Genie 2.1 is only "validated" for IE 6, which is fine for most pages intended for use by internal staff, but if you are using Genie for your OPAC, you have no control over your visitors' choice of browser. Genie does not display correctly in a non-IE browser, but it's possible, with some minor changes, to fix this. Changes include a stricter doctype, and the replacement of HTML attributes with CSS styles. The idea is to force browsers to interpret according to current web standards rather than relying on IE browser quirks (which may change with the release of IE 7 anyway). Happy to provide these updated files (catalog_search, catalog_report) if asked: info@andornot.com. Of course changes to core Genie files will be wiped out with any Genie update, so backup if you decide to make any changes!

Inmagic Genie print reports

To change the formatting of reports geared for printing in Inmagic Genie v2.1, we have been experimenting with editing the Print.css file and the BatchPrintControl.ascx file. For example, to change all reports to Arial 10pt in the Print.css, replace: BODY { MARGIN-TOP: 0in; FONT: 12pt Times; MARGIN-LEFT: 0in; BACKGROUND:White } with: body, td { margin-top: 5px; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; margin-left: 5px; background-color:#ffffff; } For clients who want to brand all their printed reports with a header, it is possible to edit the BatchPrintControl.ascx in the usercontrols directory to add HTML to insert a corporate logo, library name and contact information. This content will appear at the top of every report listed in the ReportList at the end of the MyReports.config file. This HTML must be added above the datagrid and below <%@Control....%> Note: unlike the My config files, changes to either of these files will probably be overwritten in any future Genie upgrades. Always make a backup copy of the original files as changes to these are not part of the documented or supported configuration options.