Deal Generator User Guide

Tutorial: deal report

This is one of several user guides on specific topics. The directory for all user guides is here.

The “Report” button of the Deal panel lets you create a printout with which you can share your deal.

If you want to see Double Dummy results on your report, you must load a deal file in PBN format that already contains Double Dummy results. This tutorial shows you how to obtain or create such a file.

The Deal Report will show only the deal that is currently in the deal display panel. Here, I have used the deal display scroll arrows to get to the 10th board in a 36-board set.

Notice the comma-separated values in the Auction text box. That didn’t come from the PBN file—it was all me. You must key in an auction on the main generator page if you want it to appear on your deal report. This guide tells you how to key in an auction.

Once you have your deal and, optionally, your auction, click the “Report” button just above the deal display. You should see a pop-up window that looks like this:

This is not an especially attractive layout, but don’t worry: this window is here to let you provide some additional, optional text, as well as choose some settings, for your deal report.

Any text you key in the Title text box will appear in bold print at the top of your deal report.

Your auction text, in expanded and modified form, appears in a read-only text box below the deal. You can’t change the auction here—you can only change it on the main generator page. If you close the print preview panel to get back to the main page, any text or settings on this print preview panel will be preserved.

The large text area below the auction text box is where you can type in your analysis of the deal. You can key as many characters as your browser allows in the text area; the stated limit in the HTML standard is around 524,000 characters.

The “Hide?” checkboxes below the analysis text area let you selectively display or hide each hand. This is useful when writing lessons where only certain hands matter, or where you want the reader to see only certain hands and to reason about the possible locations of the unseen cards.

If you check the “Include recipe link” checkbox, the URL of the recipe currently in the deal generator web page will be embedded in your deal report, right under the URL of the deal itself. Users viewing your report on their computers or tablets can click those links and study the deal and recipe to their heart’s content.

Let’s have a combo platter with some of everything. Here, I have keyed a title and I pasted some text into the analysis area. I asked it to hide the East and West hands. I also checked the “Include recipe link” checkbox:

Now click the “Save PDF” button and follow the prompts to save your PDF file. Be sure to key a meaningful name in the “Save As…” box of the file save dialog that pops up.

Here’s a screenshot of my PDF; you can see the document itself at this link.