Booklet Pages

rbuser

Hi All,

A self-taught newbie here evaluating the demo of RB Pro 7.03 under
Delphi 5 using TOPAZ for the dataset component. I'm quite impressed
with what I've played with so far! Now I have 2 questions for which I
haven't found answers for from the Tutorials and some of the newsgroups:

1 - Can a booklet format report be generated? Namely, 2 side-by-side
'pages' on a landscape sheet of paper, with let's say, 'Page 1' at the
bottom of the left side and 'Page 2' at the bottom of the right side,
with the pagination being continued to the next sheet of landscape
paper? Also, Group Headers/Footers could occur at different places of
each side of the sheet of paper.

2 - For each record of the database, I need to format the output as
follows:
Field1 Field2 + Concatenated String which must 'wrap' to the next
line but must be indented about 3/8" from the
start of the Field2 data.

Both Field1 and Field2 must be in Bold, the 'String' is in normal.
The 'String' is built from 8-10 fields of the record.
These 'records' are Grouped based on other criteria fields.

I currently print these reports using 'Printer.Canvas.TextOut' and
pixels-per-inch obtained from the Printer Settings since I couldn't
get QR to do what I wanted. I'm hoping RB will!

Thanks! Marie

nicocizik

Hi Marie,

Thanks for trying ReportBuilder.

1. Check out the following example of creating a booklet style report.
It's a bit tricky but we have had many customers use this method
successfully. Hope it helps.

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

2. Concatenating fields with other fields or text can be done fairly easily
using TppMemos or TppVariables. Check out Demo 33 (dm0033.pas) located in
the /RBuilder/Demos/1. Reports/... directory for a good example on how to
concatenate fields into memo objects.

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rbuser

Thanks Nico for the prompt responses.

1 - I will need to really study the Booklet example - it looks like it
may be both time and resource consuming for a large report.

2 - I have no problem with Concatenating fields (I do it all the time)
- the problems are that the first 'word' needs to be in Bold Font and
the rest of the text must not. Using the Demo #33 logic, it would be
like the 'City' being in Bold Font and the rest of the City+State+Zip
'line' in normal font.

Additionally, the 'wrapped' portion of the text must be indented.
Any 'wrapping' of a memo that I've tried has all lines
'left-justified' - I need the indent. I currently handle the problem
by calculating the ending position of the 'bold word', determine the
space remaining on the first line, find the logical break point of the
text (a space, comma, etc) to fit in that space, and then start the
second line (and remaining lines) indented from the start of the 'bold
word' and continue that process until the text is printed. I think
this is called a 'hanging indent' in MS Word. Any suggestions?

Marie

nicocizik

Hi Marie,

You may be able to use the Mail Merge feature of the TppRichText component
to get the effect you are after. I went ahead and created a small example
for you that demonstrates what the Mail Merge feature is capable of. Hope
this helps.

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

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rbuser

Hi Nico,

THANKS! That's perfect (I modified some of the positions and removed
the Variants unit to get it to work - I'm using D5 not D7). I also
tried using 2 columns to get my 'booklet' format and I think that will
work also using the Column Footer Band to print a page number using
TppCalc. You are fantastic! As the saying goes, 'the check is in the
mail'.

Marie

nicocizik

Oops, forgot you mentioned you were using Delphi 5 in your earlier post .
Glad you were able to get everything working.

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