Quick Start Guide
Prefix / Suffix Naming Convention
As you are creating individual clauses to use in your various document assembly
systems, you should carefully consider the names you give to those clauses. Clause
names will have a significant bearing on the way you will ultimately use Pathagoras. You
should develop a scheme that will make your clause names meaningful and easily
recallable.
There is a certain elegance to keeping names as short and simple as possible.
The reason is simple--if a name is long or complex, it is more difficult to remember.
For ‘alphabetization’ reasons, "Kennington, Response
Changing the names of
to Offer" is better than "Response to Offer in the
current
documents to ones
Kennington file." "Letter to Mom, Aug 2004" is
following the prefix/ suffix
(marginally) better than "Dear Mom, Please Send
naming convention need not
Money, Aug 2004".
be difficult or time
consuming.
In order to take advantage of PATHAGORAS '
Instant Open feature (found in the PathSmart module)
or the mouseless <Alt-G> method to recall a clause or
document during a document assembly session, a
short name following a definite naming pattern is
absolutely required.
Pathagoras has a tool to
make the process of
changing names and adding
a subject quite easy. Click
here to read more about this
remarkable device.
We suggest that you adopt a naming pattern reflects the general subject of the
clause that will also enable sorting of the the term (for display and selection purposes).
The examples that ship with PATHAGORAS have short names like 'wil100' and 'pl2025.'
They have the simplicity that comes with brevity, yet address the sorting needs of every
office.
Of course, an argument can be made that ‘wil100’ is a meaningless jumble of
characters and digits. "Will, Preamble" (which is what will appear when ‘wil100’ called for)
is at least meaningful. It must, therefore, better. For this instance, the statement is
probably correct. And if you could remember the name of every clause in your system
without some sort of reference device, then you need not worry about anything else
written below. But that is not realistic. Abbreviations of some type are always going to be
used. When you have to name clause dealing with the "statutory powers of the personal
representative," what will you call it: "Will, StatPowPersRep"? or perhaps “Will Personal
Rep Powers_Statutory"? “Will, Statutory Powers of the Personal Representative”? Few
can be expected to type, much less recall, these long names accurately? “Was there a
comma after the last name?” “‘Were there spaces between the words?” “An underline?”
For purposes of ‘instant recall’ of terms from your editing screen (which is the
primary reason behind this discussion; see the second paragraph above), ‘code names’
are infinitely better than long names in most situations. But you need not worry that a
descriptive name cannot be readily presented. Pathagoras takes advantage of the
Subject field of the ‘document properies’ that are part of all Word documents. A ‘long
name’ of the document or clause can be readily maintained and accessed while using a
short document name for sorting and recall purposes. It quite literally is the best of both
worlds.
By trial, error and practical experience, the 'prefix/suffix naming convention' has
been adopted by PATHAGORAS (and many other programs) as the 'best' way to implement
clause-based document assembly. As used in Pathagoras, the prefix/suffix naming
convention means that a clause's name must begin with a two to four letter prefix
immediately followed by a 3 or 4 digit numerical suffix. (The suffix can be further
'suffixed' by additional letters. 'BOC103', 'pre3433a' and 'Dz766first' all meet the
convention. 'B123', 'Clause765' and '100boc' do not.)
Pathagoras provides you a tool by which you can quickly produce a checksheet of
all of the clause names and their subjects in a selected book. With such a checksheet,
the author of the document simply checks off of the desired clauses. The author then
passes the sheet to the computer operator who would then
While we ‘push’ the prefix/suffix
electronically 'check-off' on the computer screen the
naming convention, not all clauses
parallel clauses.
should or need be stored in that
If later the author wants to add "wil122a" (Special
Gifts) into the middle of the rough draft printout of the
assembled document, the author can pencil in ‘wil122a’
onto the document. When the draft is returned to the
computer operator, he or she simply type "wil122a" at the
proper insertion point, and presses <Alt-G> (not a
dissimilar action to what the author did with pen and
pencil). The clause is instantly inserted into the new draft.
And even though your office may have developed dozens
of books containing hundreds or thousands of clauses,
Pathagoras knows exactly what path (book) to look into in
order locate the clause. This illustrates how a ‘perfectly’
fine (but long) document name cannot effectively be used
in a document assembly system.
Please note the following:

PATHAGORAS maintains a table of the associations
fashion. Pathagoras makes it easy
for you to retrieve clauses named
in any fashion from your
keyboard. Just assign a
SuperGlossary or a SuperFolder
and instantly retrieve any clause
that you store in either location.
For example, at ‘Pathagoras
headquarters,’ we store our
topical stuff (contracts, etc.) in
folders and glossaries using the
prefix/suffix naming convention.
We store other frequently needed
clauses (such as signature blocks
and addresses of our customers
and correspondents) in our
SuperGlossary. And we store
general documents that we
frequently call upon (cover letters,
for example) in our SuperFolder.
To get the signature block of
the president of the company, the
staff member simply types “rhlsig”
and presses <Alt-G>. That is it.
between a prefix and the corresponding glossary. It
SuperGlossaries and
SuperFolders are discussed at
uses the naming convention to quickly identify a
this link
term and locate the glossary in which it exists. So,
when <Alt-G> is pressed at the end of a terms
name, PATHAGORAS looks for the character-digit pattern. If the initial characters
are between 2 and 4 in number, followed by three or four digits, if looks for the
prefix in the table and goes directly to the proper glossary. If you are not using the
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above described naming convention, you will not be able to take advantage of
PATHAGORAS' full powers.

A name such as 'Contract100' is a perfectly acceptable name for a clause.
However, PATHAGORAS will not be able to discern that "Contract" is a prefix. (It
doesn’t comply with the 2 to 4 letter prefix requirement.) Therefore PATHAGORAS
will not be able to instantly link an <Alt-G> call to the glossary that contains that
term. Don't panic however: If asked via <Alt-G> to find a term such as
"Contract100", PATHAGORAS will certainly still find it, but it will take several seconds
longer for it do so than if Pathagoras were locating a term such as "Contr100".
PATHAGORAS is flexible enough to work with any of Word's naming styles and
rules. Further, the naming convention described above pertains only to the document
assembly aspects of Pathagoras, not disk navigation, saving of completed documents,
general correspondence, etc. In most cases, the name of the
The prefix/suffix naming
document is not important. (But see the second paragraph in
convention is not
mandatory. However,
this box discussing Pathagoras' "Instant open" feature.) But as
because of its simplicity,
one uses the system (especially if making <Alt-G> calls) to
flexibility and elegance, it
build documents from clauses, the benefits of the 'prefix/suffix
is certainly
recommended.
naming convention' will become apparent, and the deficits of
other naming systems and programs more pronounced.
When you want to recall a document, simply type its name to the editing screen
(anywhere in you document) and press <Alt-G>. Pathagoras will look at the text to its
immediate left and parse it up. If it sees a prefix/suffix naming style, it will determine the
prefix, locate the glossary or folder associated with the prefix and find the requested term
or document. You need do nothing! (If the term cannot be found, Pathagoras will so
report. Check spellings in such case if you know the term exists.
Pathagoras does not care which characters you choose for the prefix. It should be
meaningful to you and others users such that you would readily think of it when you think
of the subject matter.
Suffixes: As stated above, for Pathagoras to be able to identify a term as following
the prefix/suffix pattern, the prefix must be 2 to 4 letters long and the suffix must be at
least three digits long. The suffix can be longer. Be ‘clever’ with your suffixes. They can
be used to help in the assembly process. For example, if clauses are ‘successive,’ use a
simple prefix/suffix name wil100, wil110, etc. But if certain clauses are alternative and
mutually exclusive, names such as wil120a, wil120b and wil120c might communicate that
to the end user.
Despite the initial thoughts that you or your staff will ‘never remember’ the clauses,
the human brain is quite remarkable, and in fact you will remember quite a few clauses
that you frequently use, and you will be inserting them with a simple ‘flick’ of the <Alt-G>.
But you still will want a means to remember the rest. Don’t forget about these simple, but
efficient tools.
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Create a checksheet. Assuming that you have assigned the folder or glossary containing
your prefixed/suffixed names to a document assembly book, Pathagoras can easily
create the checklist. Follow these steps.
(1) Click the
document
assembly icon
from the toolbar.
(2) Select the
name of the book
from the resulting
“Libraries &
Books” screen.
(3) Click <Next>.
What you will get
is a nicely
formatted checklist showing the term names at the left and the descriptive subjects at the
right. Many offices provide the author with a supply of these checklists for use during the
initial document creation process. The author ‘manually’ selects the desired clauses and
passed the completed checksheet to the ‘typing pool’ (i.e., the people who do the ‘real’
work) where the final document is created.
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