On Jan 25, 2005, at 3:01 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Kevin wrote: "It is perfectly possible to print anything you may want to, including complex reports."
Where do we find the recipe for multi-page reports based on a source stack
with scrolling fields? Headers? Footers?
Jacque mentioned revPrintText as example.
However, report printing can be richer than that.
I have wandered over to the following style. I use a stack library to print out a particular kind of report (such as a form letter, automated newsletter, ledger sheet, exam, badge, etc.). On the cards of that library, I put smart report components with notes on how to maintain them. The exact representation and sometimes position of the component is controlled by custom properties. An example might be a footer. The stack library uses a substack for report layout with page-size cards. The substack asks the library for components, creates instances and specializes them. Often only a single page (card) is used in the layout stack, sometimes repeatedly for the same report. The substack or pages have custom properties that control the layout. Some are design-time and are normally only changed in the IDE. The rest are layered by abstractness. The layout is driven by the more abstract stack properties and a few page properties. I make heavy use of setprop. To keep from repeatedly redoing the layout each time I change a property with the stack library, I use a recursive lock property. If I change a property with the IDE (with no locking), part or all of the layout is redone immediately--this helps me in layout changes. This all creates a dataflow or descriptive layout. I can change the number of columns for something or change some margins and poof! I can see the change. There is little difference in design-time properties (eg page margins) and run-time properties (eg title). I often use printer-res images and resize them a little as needed. I usually have a mode switch that makes the layout invisible in normal usage, but visible in development and testing. (I make heavy use of setprop and got myself into trouble when I didn't check the target, so take care with those.) When the library is no longer needed or is saved, it cleans up the layout pages to keep the library stack from containing old reports.
Almost all of the report generation in this style is the bubbling of info through setprops.
Now all this is a lot more work than canned report generation and for many uses an overkill, but it supports (in my experience) Kevin Miller's statement.
Of course, this does not address concerns of printer setup & their preferences as well as Unicode issues.
I realize that is not quite a recipe, Paul.
Dar
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