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Pathagoras™

The Absolute Beginner's Guide


A Step by Step Guide to

Your First Document Assembly System

     Pathagoras offers to the new user (and the experienced user who wants to take advantage of these very easy to use 'start-up' features), an array of automated setup routines -- create a profile, create a DropDown List and create an Instant Glossary -- that will quickly get you into the program. You can find these features in the Pathagoras MainMenu. Click the green button titled "New Users: Click Here."

 

    There is no single 'right way' to do something in Pathagoras. As you become more familiar with the program, you will find that there are multiple paths to the same end. Many users have built wonderful systems following steps that are radically different from those proposed below.

     But when asked "'What is the best way for me to get started?" the following seems to be the best approach. It starts with having the user create a simple 'Pathagorized' form, one with bracketed variables. The user then saves that form, along with other (real or potential) office forms, in an appropriate 'office forms' folder. The user 'shelves' that folder as a 'book' in the user's current library. The user then plays with that single form to get a flavor for how the system works.

     When ready, and having seen simple document assembly 'in action,' the user can branch out into more extensive projects.

Step I: Neuter a document and save it into an 'office forms' folder. (We call this 'Pathagorizing.') Then shelve that folder as a book in the current library.

  1. Open a document. Any document, but one that you could arguably say is, or will become, an office form.

  2. If it doesn't already reside there, save the document you selected in step 1 above into the folder that currently contains your collection of office forms. If such a folder doesn't exist, then create one using the Windows/Word techniques with which you are already familiar. Give the document an important sounding office form name.

  3. Peruse the document. Mentally note the places throughout the document where currently 'personal' or customer- or client-specific data presently exists. (It could be a name or an address, a quantity or a color. Anything like that.) Our first goal is to turn all that personal sounding stuff into neutral 'variables.' (This process is called neutering, but it is nothing like what you might do to your dog. All you are going to do here is create a place holder ) These are the steps: At the beginning of each of those 'personal places' type a "[" (a bracket, no quotes, tho'). At the end of each 'personal place' type a "]" (again no quotes).

  4. Replace the stuff in between the two facing brackets with generic sounding, not 'real people,' names. So, after completing the above steps, "Jonathan E. Doeberg" might become "[Client Name]" and "4,342 thousand widgets" might become "[quantity] [item ordered]".

    Got something that is naturally a 'multiple-choice' item? How about "he or she" or "widgets, fribbets and moglets." Piece of cake! Place all of the choices within the brackets, just separate the individual choices by slashes. For example, "[he/she/they]" and "[widgets/fribbets/strawberry cream moglets]". The multiple choices can number up to 5. Multiple words are perfectly acceptable, so yes, you could have "chocolate covered fribbets" as the second choice. (If you want to add large blocks of optional text, see Part IV for a discussion and a link to the Optional Text pages.)

  5. Save the changes to your document once you have completely neutered it, but leave it on the screen.

  6. Before closing the document, we need to 'shelve' the book into the document assembly library to make it available to the document assembly system. It is a very simple process. (For now, don't worry too much about why the following works. Some explanations are provided below, but actually we just want you to do what we say. When you see your work in real live action in just a few minutes, you will understand it better.) Do the following:

    a.  Click the document assembly icon (3rd from left in the Pathagoras menu). The 'Books & Libraries' screen will appear. This screen displays the current selection of books in the current library.

d.  Select the #2 button from the screen that next appears. ("Documents in a folder") and then select the next #2 button ("This document") after that.

Now you can close the document.

You have now Pathagorized your first document and placed it on a shelf in your library (making it and all the documents within its folder available to the document assembly system). In the second step below, we are going to use it.


Step II. Assemble a new document using the form you just created above.

  1. Click the document assembly icon (3rd from left in the Pathagoras menu). The 'Books and Libraries screen will appear.

  2. Select the option button next to the name of the book you assigned in step 4 above.

  3. Click the Next>> button. The Clause Selection screen displays, showing all documents in your new book. (Remember, this book is the folder which contains the form document you just created.) Potentially you could check every box showing and assemble them all into one brand-new, great-big, document, but we don't want to do that just now.

  4. Click on the form you created and then click the Add-> button to move your form to the left panel. (Diversion: before clicking the Add-> button, click the Preview button. The first 1000 characters of the text of the form will appear in a preview screen. So if you are not quite sure what a particular clause says or does, you can easily preview it. Close the preview screen.)

  5. Select the "Assemble" radio button at the top right side of the screen and then click the <Next> button next to that. A copy of the form will quickly be inserted onto a new page. (You can tell it is a copy, and not the original document because it is called "Document 2" or "Document 5" or something like that. The original document is safely tucked away in your folder. No more accidentally overwriting original forms (not that you have ever done that, but some other people have).

     You have now 'assembled' a document. As a practical matter, however, you have only placed a copy of only one document onto your editing screen, but you are well on your way to understanding what document assembly is all about.

      Imagine something along with us. Imagine that each of the documents that you saw displayed on the editing screen a second ago weren't complete documents, but rather were parts of a former complete document, perhaps a single clause of a contract or of a will, etc. Imagine that, instead of checking one item from the list of available documents, you had selected 15. And imagine that each of the separate mini-documents was properly 'neutered' following the techniques described in Part I above. You would then have 15 separate, hand selected paragraphs which now make up a complete, highly individualized document which fits the specific customers needs. We hope that you are able to see from just the little bit of work you have done thus far the beginnings of a real document assembly system.

Step III: Personalizing the Documents

Okay, the document you created is 'specific' and 'individualized' but it is not yet 'personalized.'  Here is how to do that.

  1. Press the <Alt-D> key combination. The Instant Database screen will appear. (If for some reason <Alt-D> doesn't work, don't panic. Click the Pathagoras drop down menu and select the Instant Database entry in the list.).

  2. Note the two columns of the IDB form. The left side will contain the variables in your document and the right side will contain the personal data that you want to substitute for the variables. So how do you get the variables into the left column? Just hand type them in. ONLY KIDDING! You can automatically feed the [bracketed variables] into the IDB screen by clicking the <Scan> button at the right (toward the bottom) of the IDB screen. Boom. WOW! Instantly, Pathagoras finds all bracketed variables and inserts them into the left column of the form.

  3. Your job now is to put 'real people' values in the right side. Press the tab button to move from field to field. (No kidding here. Sorry! You really have to type the person's name, address, etc. Pathagoras can do lots of things, but mind reading isn't one of them.)

  4. When you have finished placing 'client/customer specific' values in each box next to a variable name, press the Next>> button. You will be asked "Do you want to save this record for possible reuse?" Say "Yes" and, when prompted, give the 'record' a name--(maybe the last name of the real or fake person you are completing this form for). (This is the 'Database' part of the system.) Immediately and automatically after that, all of the variables in the document will instantly be replaced with the personal values you provided.

  5. Now, let's try out the 'database' aspect to Pathagoras. Repeat items 1-5 of Step 2 above to assemble your document. Press <Alt-D> just like you did in 1 immediately above, but instead of <Scanning> for variables when the Instant Database mask appears, click the dropdown list at the right. Click on the name of the record you saved in 7 above. See how the database part works?

Back to imagining. Imaging that the form you are completing is not the same one you used before but a different form with the same variables. See how you don't have to input the same personal information more that once. So long as the variables in all of your documents are the same, you have an fully functional 'input data only once' document assembly system.

Step IV: Adding blocks of Optional Text.

     In Part I above, you may have added what hopefully seemed to you to be easy to create multiple-choice selections. You saw that the choices were intended to be short and sweet, just a few words. But, as you become more familiar with document assembly, you will want to be able to bring in, and select among, large blocks of optional text, or to choose whether a particular block of text should be included in (or deleted from) the final document. Pathagoras provides an easy way of placing these optional text blocks into your document. It is a slightly advanced function, but the next logical step for the absolute beginner to take once the above has been mastered. Click on this link to read all about how to insert optional text into your document. The best part? It is all plain text.

Now go for it!

 

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