How can I fill a report with ruled lines

[Jude Henry]

I am printing a report that should have ruled lines. I can accomplish that by putting boxes around the field in the report detail section. But if there are not enough records to fill one page the rule lines just reach as far as there are records. Is there a way that I can overcome this problem?

Jude

[Tom O'Keeffe]

RE: How can I fill a report with ruled lines

Jude,
Have a look (search)in this forum or perhaps in Learn Alpha articles where I recall there was a previous article on how to put nice colour change breaks in your reports. I do believe the same technique applies here. The approach in the Article was quite detailed with code etc and should work for you or be adaptable.
Best Regards
tom

[Jude Henry]

RE: How can I fill a report with ruled lines

Yes, I found that, but it is not working because it stops where the report ends, it does not continue to to fill the whole page.

Thanks

Jude

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: How can I fill a report with ruled lines

Jude,

A not very creative solution would be to use a temporary table as the foundation for your report. Copy your records there at print time. Add enough blank records to force ruled lines to the bottom of the page. This would be very tedious, and difficult to automate, but if you really really need the lines it would do it.

Perhaps a better solution would be to export your records and then use the export file as the source for a mailmerge operatioin using your favorite windows wordprocessor. The template for your merge could have ruled lines.

A final idea would be to create the template in your word processor, including ruled lines to the bottom of the page. Then scan that document into a bitmap image, and try to embed that image into your report layout, so that the fields in your data print on top of the image.

-- tom

[Coyndigger]

RE: How can I fill a report with ruled lines

Hi Jude,

Another suggestion that I used for a report is to Put lines or boxes
in your continuous footer region, and keep them to the top of the
region and the detail region adjusted to the bottom. You will have to
experiment a little, the report will look like it has continuous lines
when printed.

Regards,

Paul

[Jude Henry]

RE: How can I fill a report with ruled lines

Ok I will try that. I was wondering is there a code that I can attach to a form button that can check the number of lines in a browse and automatically input some blank records that will make the form generate a fill page?

Jude

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: How can I fill a report with ruled lines

Jude,

Such code would have to be custom crafted and would be quite complex. Paul's idea sounds much easier.

-- tom

[Jude Henry]

RE: How can I fill a report with ruled lines

This code here works but I am sure it can be better.

'I attached this script to a button on a form. On the on pushed event
'it ensures the lines will always be 20.


'XBasic
option strict
dim tbl as p
dim line as n
dim count as n
dim rec as n
dim addl as n
dim i as n
rec=0
count=0
addl=0

tbl=table.open("time")
tbl.fetch_first()
while .not. tbl.fetch_eof()
rec=rec+1
trace.writeln(str(rec))
tbl.fetch_next()
end while
count=rec
'Check to see how many lines table has

if count

[JohnZaleski]

RE: How can I fill a report with ruled lines

The idea of adding bogus records to a table just to print a line(s) seems a little awkward. Why not put a conditional object in the page footer,report footer or group footer if you have one. Make 20 conditions something like:
1)mod(mrecno(),20) = 1 2)mod(mrecno(),20) = 2 etc. all the way to 20.
If 1 put 19 lines in the object, 2 put 18 lines in the object etc.
Check off shrink the object and don't check off bottom justify on the region.
Not tested but it should work.

[Peter.Greulich]

RE: How can I fill a report with ruled lines

FWIW: If I'm not mistaken, cond objects support only 14 conditions.

[JohnZaleski]

RE: How can I fill a report with ruled lines

Didn't know that. If that is the case, then you could do it with two conditional objects, one directly below the other. The first object would handle from 1 to 9 and 10 and over, the second would handle

[Jude Henry]

RE: How can I fill a report with ruled lines

Hi,
Let me give you a little more insight as to what is happening. The form I am printing is a Government form and it has about twenty lines, if I input 1 line I will need to draw the other 19 lines to fill the detail until the page footer is reached.

If the report has 10 records I will have to draw 10 ruled lines until I get to the page footer, and so on.

In the past what I did to get around it. I printed just a ruled form and I used Alpha Five Report to fill in the blanks.

But now I realise how powerful Alpha Five is I am looking for an easer way.

If nescessary I can send you one of the printed reports

Thanks

Jude

[whanigsberg]

RE: How can I fill a report with ruled lines

I've never done this but you probably could scan a ruled form into a bitmap and use the bitmap as the report's background object. You probably would have to fiddle with size and spacing.

Bill