David, thanks for the very helpful and informative post. It sounds like you have addressed the same problems I'm having. I do toggle the formatForPrinting as you describe, but I did not do the close-and-open business before the actual printing. I may try that. Maybe it isn't so superstitious after all. I have also had the unexplained termination/crashing problems you describe.

With Pierre's generous help, I've found that for this particular print job I may not need to set the formatForPrinting at all; leaving it false appears to work okay. This is because the columns I am printing are gennerously wide and there is no text wrap, so it doesn't matter whether we are using the printer fonts or not. To keep things simple, I may just leave out the formatForPrinting setting entirely.

It seems to me this printing business could be improved, especially on Windows machines. Thanks again for your help. I will definitely save your scripts for reference.


On 8/29/04 8:18 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Jacqueline Landman Gay wrote of Windows printing problems:


The printing stack has its formatForPrinting set to true.

My script fills both fields, prints the card, prints a break, then repeats until the data is gone.


The documentation for "formatForPrinting" warns us never to edit a field with its 
formatForPrinting set to true.  A script that "fills both fields" is editing a field with 
formatForPrinting set to true.

I experienced the symptoms you described, plus the program frequently simply quitting, 
while trying to print in Windows using Metacard 2.5.  I believe I have now remedied 
the problem by having my script repeatedly call this command:

on ffp whether
  set the formatForPrinting of stack <myPrintLayoutStack> to whether
end ffp

FormatForPrinting needs to be FALSE before the script changes a field's content 
(including filling it in the first place), and it needs to be TRUE before you try to 
determine what changes are needed based on how the text fits in the space available 
(and before you print).  For example, here's handler I use to determine what text 
doesn't fit in a field and needs to be moved to the next column or page:

function extraText f -- returns the htmlText that overflows size of fld f
  ffp true -- SO THAT FORMATTEDHEIGHT WILL BE PROPERLY CALCULATED
  repeat with c = 1 to length(fld f)
    if the formattedHeight of char 1 to c of fld f > the height of fld f then
      put the htmlText of char c to -1 of fld f into myHtml
      ffp false -- BECAUSE I'M ABOUT THE CHANGE THE CONTENT OF FLD F
      delete char c to -1 of fld f
      return myHtml
    end if
  end repeat
  ffp false -- READY FOR FURTHER EDITS OF FLD F
  return empty
end extraText

Just before you print, set ffp true again.  Somewhere (but not in Rev docs, I think) I 
read advice suggesting a further precaution:  close and open the stack and then set 
formatForPrinting to true.  So I added this just before printing:

    set the destroyStack of stack <myPrintLayoutStack> to true
    save stack <myPrintLayoutStack>
    close stack <myPrintLayoutStack>
    open stack <myPrintLayoutStack>
    ffp true

This last bit seems a littler superstitious, but since I made these fixes a couple of 
weeks ago my Windows printing has worked properly.

I hope this will help with your difficulties.

David Epstein
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Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     [EMAIL PROTECTED]
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com
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