History
The creation of Manifest Creator (MC) came about via a very circuitous route. If all began when I was asked to an Operating Session at Bill Zastro's layout in Clare, Michigan. I was very new to operations in general but knew that I wanted to hold Operating Sessions in my then (and still) under construction layout. Bill used clipboards and hand drawn manifests. The orders on these manifests were also generated by hand and entered into the photocopied manifests. Being rather handy in the use of Microsoft Excel for generating forms, I felt that I could improve the hand designed manifest that Bill was using. I wanted to do this as a thank-you for attending the operating session. I was able to do this and the first version of MC was born. However, this was just a computer generated version of what Bill had done with paper and pencil. The orders on these manifests still were done by hand, not only the entering of the data but figuring what cars went where.
About this time I stumbled into JMRI Operations. I had been looking at Ship-It but the initial learning curve seemed very steep, the software seemed pricey, and I just wasn't sure if it would do what I wanted. After looking at JMRI Operations, I found that to begin with very rudimentary operations, the learning curve was almost non-existent. At the same time I felt that at the rudimentary level, these computer generated orders would be an improvement to doing them by hand. So I thought I would share this information with Bill as well.
I soon found that the original manifest that I had created using Excel would not function with the data generated by JMRI. So in the beginning, I reformatted the original Excel manifest and attempted to use the text output that was used to print the manifests in JMRI. Soon I began having discussions with Dan Boudreau and we decided that things would be much easier for MC if Dan were to output a CSV formatted file.
This was the beginning of what we have now. Having a CSV formatted file made the parsing process in Excel VBA, that was required, much easier than just reading the raw text file. So having started with Excel, it just seemed natural that I would use Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) within Excel, since I was only doing this for my friend Bill. There were several conversations on what items would be appropriate in the CSV file and Dan Boudreau finally came up with what we all have now. (See JMRI Operations documentation for details.) After a bit of work, I thought that this format and parsing of the CSV file might be of interest to others using JMRI. At this point I was unaware that so many JMRI users were non-PC/Windows users but since have found there are many that are not running on this platform. But the die had been cast.
My initial release was announced via the JMRI User Group and I found that there were some users that were interested in what Manifest Creator could do for them. The program has grown over the past years, mainly based upon user input which has been invaluable. Thank you to all that have contributed ideas. And a big THANK YOU to Dan Boudreau for all that he has done to make MC workable. I also need to take time to recognize "Inspector Dave" as he was instrumental in establishing the link between JMRI and MC and the development of Switch List Creator. There have been many many others that have contributed great ideas and I thank you all!
NOTE: It is interesting that the original Excel formatted manifest was never used for an actual operating session by Bill, and since then Bill has retired from the hobby. But I still thank him as he was the catalyst to the creation of the Manifest Creator. Thank you Bill Zastro!
About this time I stumbled into JMRI Operations. I had been looking at Ship-It but the initial learning curve seemed very steep, the software seemed pricey, and I just wasn't sure if it would do what I wanted. After looking at JMRI Operations, I found that to begin with very rudimentary operations, the learning curve was almost non-existent. At the same time I felt that at the rudimentary level, these computer generated orders would be an improvement to doing them by hand. So I thought I would share this information with Bill as well.
I soon found that the original manifest that I had created using Excel would not function with the data generated by JMRI. So in the beginning, I reformatted the original Excel manifest and attempted to use the text output that was used to print the manifests in JMRI. Soon I began having discussions with Dan Boudreau and we decided that things would be much easier for MC if Dan were to output a CSV formatted file.
This was the beginning of what we have now. Having a CSV formatted file made the parsing process in Excel VBA, that was required, much easier than just reading the raw text file. So having started with Excel, it just seemed natural that I would use Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) within Excel, since I was only doing this for my friend Bill. There were several conversations on what items would be appropriate in the CSV file and Dan Boudreau finally came up with what we all have now. (See JMRI Operations documentation for details.) After a bit of work, I thought that this format and parsing of the CSV file might be of interest to others using JMRI. At this point I was unaware that so many JMRI users were non-PC/Windows users but since have found there are many that are not running on this platform. But the die had been cast.
My initial release was announced via the JMRI User Group and I found that there were some users that were interested in what Manifest Creator could do for them. The program has grown over the past years, mainly based upon user input which has been invaluable. Thank you to all that have contributed ideas. And a big THANK YOU to Dan Boudreau for all that he has done to make MC workable. I also need to take time to recognize "Inspector Dave" as he was instrumental in establishing the link between JMRI and MC and the development of Switch List Creator. There have been many many others that have contributed great ideas and I thank you all!
NOTE: It is interesting that the original Excel formatted manifest was never used for an actual operating session by Bill, and since then Bill has retired from the hobby. But I still thank him as he was the catalyst to the creation of the Manifest Creator. Thank you Bill Zastro!