Thanks Tim,
Just the solution I needed. I haven't ever bothered using cat.c on long text fields as I thought it also might have a smaller character limit, will it handle up to the 64k allowable in a Text field? Regards Brian _____ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Tim Rude Sent: Saturday, 13 September 2008 11:35 PM To: Dataperfect Users Discussion Group Subject: Re: [Dataperf] Text Field in Reports annoyance... Brian, Since you cannot successfully concatenate your data and codes while outputting it, you need to concatenate it *before* you output it. Create a report variable that appends your starting and ending tags to the contents of your AxAy field before outputting it all as one chunk. Fortunately the cat.c function isn't limited to 78 chars as so many of the other text handling functions are. Assign RV1: cat.c["<myhtml><!CDATA[";P1F1;"]]>"] Then in the report, output it as: # </myhtml> (where # represents RV1 formatted as A0A0) Assuming P1F1 contained your sample text, the output is: <myhtml><![CDATA[<br> This is some data inside a CDATA section. The <u>Quick</u> Brown fox jumps over the lazy dog]]> </myhtml> Tim Rude ----- Original Message ----- From: Brian <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Hancck To: 'Dataperfect <mailto:[email protected]> Users Discussion Group' Sent: Saturday, September 13, 2008 7:40 AM Subject: [Dataperf] Text Field in Reports annoyance... Hi Everyone, I have been putting up with a minor annoyance in DP reports for some time as it has always seemed too hard to rectify; if it can be rectified. When using a Text Field AxAy in a Report, when you insert the field with the F4 Key it inserts the field format as AyA0 (where y is the width of the field in the panel.) The A0 part basically says output all of the field's data, irrespective of how many lines it takes. If you want fine control you can change the AyA0 to say AyA1 which outputs only the first line but keeps the position counter at the beginning of the next line, if you then output the same field again with AyA1 it outputs the next line, and repositions the output counter to the next line. You can use other numbers other 1 to output the next n lines. It is only when you format an AxA0 to output the balance of the field, or use the Print Mode Indicator ;;N does the position counter reset itself back to the beginning of the field. It generally provides all the control I need. I might have missed something because this doesn't actually help my problem, although I suspected that there might be some manipulation that would The output I usually want from DP is XML or XHTML. Generally to use the data, just in case there are XML entities lurking in the data, I often would use AxA0;;W (The ;;W print mode indicator changes the entities to valid XML eg < becomes < etc. On occasions my AxAy fields are actually filled with HTML data which I can render in a browser so I do not want to use the ;;W. At other times I do not want the content to be parsed by an XML processor at all, and so you do that in XML by wrapping the data in a CDATA section. An example of an XML element with a CDATA section is this <myhtml><![CDATA[<br> This is some data inside a CDATA section. The <u>Quick</u> Brown fox jumps over the lazy dog]]> </myhtml> Lets say I output this from DP like this <myhtml><!CDATA[##########]]> </myhtml> Where ######## is an AxA0 field instead of what I wanted I would have gotten <myhtml><![CDATA[<br> This is some data inside a CDATA section.]]> The <u>Quick</u> Brown fox jumps over the lazy dog </myhtml> ie the CDATA section is closed off at the end of the first line instead of after the last line, and this is altogether different from what I require. (This can be areal gotcha as in the example I have just done it would still be well formed XML and so you would not get any indication from the XML Processor (eg browser) that something was not right Alternatively, which is my workaround, I can output from DP like this: <myhtml><!CDATA[########## ]]> </myhtml> ie putting the closing of the CDATA section on a new line, and although this gives me the generally correct XML result, it inserts an extra CR after the data and before the closing of the CDATA section. <myhtml><![CDATA[<br> This is some data inside a CDATA section. The <u>Quick</u> Brown fox jumps over the lazy dog ]]> </myhtml> Usually the extra CR is no problem, and is just an annoyance, but there are other times when it can interfere with the results I want. If I could guarantee that the HTML content was actually well formed XHTML I might not need to use the CDATA at all and the extra CR would not be an issue, but I cannot guarantee that, so I need another way. Basically I would like to get the closing ]]> to be appended immediately after the last bit of data from the DP Text field on the same line. It is rare that I can't get DP to deliver exactly what I want and it is giving me the @#$%s that I haven't found an elegant way of doing it. I am sure the same need to output text on the same line after the last character in a AxAy field, occurs in other applications, so I am hoping that someone has come up with a solution Regards Brian _____ _______________________________________________ Dataperf mailing list [email protected] http://lists.dataperfect.nl/mailman/listinfo/dataperf
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