Printing summary at the bottom of the page

rbuser

We need to print the summary on the final page of the report at the bottom
of the page, irrespective of the print position of the final detail line.
The Footer is set not to print on the final page. We need this behaviour
successfully print multi-page documents, such as invoices, especially where
the client uses pre-printed stationery.

In version 7 we put the following code in the BeforePrint of the ppSummary.

ppReport1.Footer.Visible := False;
ppSummaryBand1.PrintPosition := ppReport1.PrinterSetup.PaperHeight -
ppReport1.PrinterSetup.MarginBottom - ppSummaryBand1.Height-
(ppReport1.PrinterSetup.PaperHeight / 100);

In version 10, this seems to cause the Footer not to print after the first
page. The space that would normally be taken up by the footer is filled
with extra detail lines, which are then repeated at the top of the following
page.

I have tried a lot of different variations of this - eg. running the above
code only on the second pass, setting the Footer to be visible in the
Afterprint event, moving the code to the BeforeGenerate event etc. without
success.

How am I meant to do this?

TIA.

Roger Vellacott
Passfield Data Systems ltd

nicocizik

Hi Roger,

1. Instead of manually setting the visibility of the footer band, try
setting the TppFooterBand.PrintOnLastPage to False.

2. A more robust way of handling the task of printing the summary band on
the bottom of the last page is to loop through each draw command and move
them to the proper position on the page. See the following example on how
this can be done.

http://www.digital-metaphors.com/tips/AlignSummaryToBottom.zip

--
Regards,

Nico Cizik
Digital Metaphors
http://www.digital-metaphors.com

rbuser

Nico,

Many thanks for the fantastically prompt response.

I need to cope with users adding new objects, or deleting existing objects,
from the report design, so I can't hard-code the assignment of the
DrawCommandCreate methods, as in your example.

I intend therefore to loop through the objects on the summary band, creating
a DrawCommand list, as in your example.

But what is the best point to do this? I would like it to be just before
printing, rather than on loading the template, or after creating the report,
as this will allow freedom to dynamically add or remove components without
having to worry about repositioning them.

Also, how does one deal with regions, and objects inside regions?

Does the draw command override a false Visible property?

Finally, can I suggest a new property on the summary band for a future
version. "Print at bottom of page". There must be a lot of people who would
appreciate this.

TIA

Roger Vellacott
Passfield Data Systems Ltd

nicocizik

Hi Roger,

I would recommend looping through all of report components in the
summaryband (perhaps inside the BeforePrint event) and assigning each of
their OnDrawCommandCreate events manually. Then inside the
OnDrawCommandCreate you can create the dynamic list of drawcommands.

Regions are simply rectangles when drawn to the report. They will be moved
along with any other drawcommands.

No, the visible property determines whether the drawcommand is created or
not.

Yes, we are strongly considering adding this feature to the next major
release of RB.

--
Regards,

Nico Cizik
Digital Metaphors
http://www.digital-metaphors.com

rbuser

Nico,

I got this to work well.

A complication was that Report.Engine.PageBottom does not actually give the
bottom of the page. It gives the top of the footer band - even on the last
page and the footer band is set not to print on the last page.

I fixed it by adding in the SpaceUsed of the footer band to the newly
calculated top of the summary band.

Thanks for your help.

Roger Vellacott