How to detect if OnStartPage is printing a subreport

rbuser

D7E, RB14.08.

I have a situation where a subReport is set in a region that takes up
an entire page. The sub report is in GroupFooterBand3 of the main
report.

This is a two-pass report.

In ppReport.OnStartPage, I need to determine if I'm printing the 'main'
part of the report, or if this is a StarPage for the group footer -
which will do different logic based on the fact that I'm now printing
the subreport.


That is, I've logged "event firing" order as:

ppReportStartPage (printing main)
GroupHeaderBand1BeforePrint
GroupHeaderBand2BeforePrint
GroupFooterBand1BeforePrint
GroupFooterBand3BeforePrint (sub)
ppReportStartPage (printing sub)
GroupFooterBand3BeforePrint (sub)
ppChildStartPage
ppReportStartPage (printing main)
GroupHeaderBand1BeforePrint
GroupHeaderBand2BeforePrint
GroupFooterBand1BeforePrint
GroupFooterBand3BeforePrint (sub)
ppReportStartPage (printing sub)
GroupFooterBand3BeforePrint (sub)
ppChildStartPage


I need to know when ppReportStartPage triggers for the start of the
SubReport as opposed to the main report.

I can set flags in the events, but wonder if there's a better "RB" way?

Thanks.

EdB

nicocizik

Hi Ed,

The ChildReport.StartPage event will fire with the subreport starts,
then each subsequent page break.

If the subreport is inside the GroupFooter Band, you could simply use
the GroupFooter.BeforePrint to determine when the subreport will begin
printing.

rbuser

Hi Nico,

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "simply use the
GroupFooter.BeforePrint to determine when the subreport will begin
printing."

Right now, in the group footer beforeprint, I'm already controlling
visibility.

That is, I do
ppSubReport1.Visible := ;

The footer BeforePrint gets called multiple times before the subReport
actually does any printing (that is, I might be setting visible:=true,
but the event is fired without actually performing a print).

Assuming .visible is true, how am I to determine that the ppSubReport
is actually in the 'printing' phase?

EdB

nicocizik

Is the subreport the only item inside the region? If so, couldn't you
use the Region.OnPrint event to determine when the subreport starts?

I'm still not quite clear how your report is designed but as you
mentioned in your first post, it may be necessary to assign flags in the
subreport events to let the rest of your app know the subreport is printing.

rbuser

The report prints a manufacturing work order, and a drawing (sound
familiar? ).

The main report has a group on work order no. It has a group header and
footer. The subreport is the only object in the group header, the group
footer is 'empty' (height=0).

At run time, the user decides if the drawing should be printed before
or after the main work order (I assign the subReport to the footer if
"after").

The main report is portrait mode, the drawings are landscape - so far
everything has been going great - I can toggle between
landscape/portrait without any issues on (so far) every printer I've
come across.

I also have a (new) requirement of setting duplex mode. I'm trying to
figure out the best place to check duplex type - ie set dupemode to
none, hor or vert mode depending on whether printing main report,
subreport, or blank page (hopefully skipped - I've posted in another
thread about this) in subreport.

Right now I'm using flags to control things - but not very elegant.

It sounds like you'd suggest I drop a region into the header, move the
subreport into the region, and then reassign the region to
header/footer depending on whether drawing should print before/after
main report.

Right now I have events in ppReportStartPage and ppSubReportStartPage -
it isn't clear to me that moving the subreportStartPage code to
RegionBeforePrint (or OnPrint) will help - it might be "too late" to
set duplex (or eject page) at that point.

In a typical scenario (drawing after page, subReport assigned to group
footer)


[grp header height=0]

[main report
.PageStart=set duplex mode

]

[grp footer
.BeforePrint - set subReport visibility
[subReport
.StartPage - ppChildReport1.Engine.Page.PrinterSetup.Duplex:=

]
]



EdB

nicocizik

Hi Ed,


Sorry no, in your initial post you mentioned that you had a subreport in
a region. I assumed you were already using a TppRegion.

Honestly if I were doing this, I would also use the "non-elegant" flag
method. As you have seen, getting the timing correct for subreport and
main report events can be tricky at times.

As for your duplex issue, you will likely have to send PCL commands to
adjust duplexing during generation. We will address this in the other
thread.