Document assembly, as we have described elsewhere, suggests one of these two techniques (and combinations of the two, when appropriate):

•'Paragraph assembly.' This is document assembly starting from a 'blank slate, and pouring selected paragraphs onto the page to create the desired text.

•'Template assembly.'  This type of assembly starts with an overbuilt document containing all possible text combinations. By completing an interview, and answering prompts, any unnecessary language is deleted and appropriate text retained.

Regardless of the technique adopted, Pathagoras allows you to continue to insert additional text to achieve the needs of the client, customer or patient.

The two techniques above both deal primarily with the assembly of paragraphs.

But paragraphs end with Enters and carriage returns, not readily lending themselves to building sentences. Further, the terms and clauses used in 'document assembly' are stored in individual documents.

Sometimes, however, you just want to construct your text from simple words and phrases. These terms are typically short (single words or simple phrases) and for that reason you don't want to devote an entire document to preserve just that short snippet.

Pathagoras provides you a third assembly technique. We call this 'Sentence Assembly'. It allows you to assemble text from short snippets of text. The snippets are the terms saved at terms associated with *Aliases* as discussed in previous pages of this section. So, if you have an alias *States* representing the 50 United States of America, you can ask Pathagoras to present them in a selectable listing. Choose from the list and you can easily create a sentence or other lists.

By way of example, a psychologist may want to describe the appearance, attitude or affect of a patient using terms such as 'cooperative' or 'belligerent' or a dozen or so other phrases. Typing each word to the screen is possible (and is likely the real life practice). But if the terms have been saved into an *Alias* list, Pathagoras' 'Sentence assembly' tool can be used to build a quick description of the patient, a list of prescribed medications, or anything else. (Of course, if the *Alias* doesn't yet exist, you can easily create it.)

So this is a possible collection of *Aliases* illustrating the above:

 

   There are several ways to 'call' the *Alias*.

 <<*Options**Appearance*>> in the document body is the 'classic' method. You can also use the simple options method: {*Appearance*}.

 When the document is processed, Pathagoras will present a list of all of the *Alias* terms in a selection list, such as:

 

         Select 1, 2, 10 or all items.

 If you select more than one item, the connectors options will display:

 

 When you hit the next button, the selected items are quickly cobbled together into a nice, compact sentence.

 If you want a numbered or bulleted list, make sure the 'call' is made next to a number or bullet. Select 'Enters' as the connector.

 You can also double-click on an item and the selected item will be inserted onto your editing screen.

 

Display *Alias* as DropDown List

 You can display the terms of your *Alias* List in an 'always on' DropDown List for easy selection and insertion into your document. Click here for the steps on how to do so.

 

NOTES:

   While the above examples use words and short phrases, Pathagoras can easily handle much longer terms and even complete sentences. So, this section could have been called "Paragraph Assembly"

   Formatting is controlled by where the items are inserted in your document, not the 'style' of text in the *Alias* source.

   The tool was developed primarily to speed up the assembly of 'group-able' items. But as you can see from the examples, it can also be used as a 'speller helper' ('Medication Names') and a thesaurus.