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watermarks

edited November 2001 in General
I would like to place a watermark down the right third of the report. I want
the position to be the same place vertically and horizontally on the page.

I use detail and group bands, so the watermark needs to span more than one
band and not be restricted to the height of the band.

How can I accomplish this?

Michael Philbrick
Animal Intelligence Software, Inc.

Comments

  • edited November 2001

  • edited November 2001
    Watermarks.

    I have been looking for a robust way to implement a watermark in RBuilder
    for some time. My requirement is to have a line of text, such as "D R A F T
    D R A F T" appear on each page visible but underneath all other text and
    images. Just like a physical watermark on a sheet of paper. The watermark
    should be capable of being made invisible, programatically. The watermark
    should be consistent whether the report is printed to screen or a printer.

    The programatically invisible requirement is easily handled by setting a
    labels visible property to false.

    The first requirement is also handled by placing a label or an image in a
    PageStyle Band, setting its Transparent property to true and setting the
    transparent property of each component it will appear under to true. This
    works well when a report is printed to screen.

    However, when the report is printed to a printer the watermark is sometimes
    invisible on each page where a TppRichText component is laid over the
    watermark. I assume this is caused by the printer driver in use not by
    Report Builder. It is impractical for me to ask users of my application to
    "ensure you have the latest print driver for your printer". I only have this
    problem when the watermark component (TppLabel or TppImage) is underneath a
    TppDBRichText component (and presumably TppRichText?). If you can avoid
    TppRichText components placing a watermark component in a PageStyle band
    should work well, I think.

    Also, when some a TppDBRichText component contains Courier New font and the
    component is Transparent, its screen presentation looks faint and causes
    users to be concerned it will not print correctly. It does print correctly.

    So, in my experience implementing a watermark is not straightforward.

    The pragmatic and less than desired solution I have is to place watermark
    components in the report's header and footer where I have no TppDBRichText
    components.

    If others have better solutions or can point out better ideas I would
    appreciate hearing from you.

    Regards

    Russell Belding





  • edited November 2001
    Most printers don't handle transparency very well.

    For the rich text preview resolution problem, try setting the viewer's zoom
    to 100%


    Cheers,

    Jim Bennett
    Digital Metaphors


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