The next version of MR SLAM Formatter contains a wealth of new options, and it sports a reorganization of the preferences window. The changes are given in the user’s manual and below.
Not a new feature in MR SLAM Formatter, but effective in JMRI test version 5.7.5 (production version 5.8 due June 2024) OperationsProtm has been revised to be more user friendly for MR SLAM Formatter users when creating switch lists. A big thanks to Dan Boudreau of the JMRI team.
New Features in version 2.03
- At startup, if the computer has an internet connection, the program checks to see if there is a new version of the program. There is a preference setting to disable this option, if desired.
- As requested by user Mike H., the program has been revised to allow the program’s preference files to be stored at a location of the users choosing. This supports using file sharing software such as Dropbox™ to share MR SLAM Formatter’s preference files between two or more computers. There is a video demonstrating this new capability. See video #8 in the video section of this website.
- At the request of user Kelly R. added an option for manifests to avoid splitting a location’s movements across a page. If the option is selected and a location’s movements will not fit on the remaining lines of a page, a page break is done and the location prints on the next page.
- At the request of user Kelly R., added preference settings to turn off route location comments on a switch list and to suppress the train departure message on manifests. I also added several more manifest and switch list specific preferences to allow full control of which of the numerous comment fields from JMRI are displayed. Due to the increase in the number of preference settings, separate manifest and switch list specific preferences were moved to their own sub-window. See video #7 in the video section of this website.
- Revised the code so that if the user selects to suppress train data in the train departure message on manifests & switch lists, the # of cars in the train is also suppressed. Previously this option only suppressed the # of loads, empties, train weight, and train length.
- The option previously titled a wheel report has been renamed to a blocking report. This was done as a “wheel report” is an ill defined term. No change in functionality was made.
- Added the ability to backup your preference settings and to restore the program from a previously saved set of preference files.
- The program has many options to select what color to print various parts of the document. There were however 2 items that the program had hard coded to print red. These were the 2 “alerts”; the change of direction alert in the train departure line, and the “++” on the right margin indicating the widths of the columns exceed the page width. For users that prefer to print their documents in black & white, I added a general preference for these to print in black.