RE: Can I do this in Alpha Five?
Hi John:
I downloaded the file but won't have time to look at it until tonight. Glad you were intrigued by the challenge and I appreciate your help.
Robert
Announcement
Collapse
The Alpha Software Forum Participation Guidelines
The Alpha Software Forum is a free forum created for Alpha Software Developer Community to ask for help, exchange ideas, and share solutions. Alpha Software strives to create an environment where all members of the community can feel safe to participate. In order to ensure the Alpha Software Forum is a place where all feel welcome, forum participants are expected to behave as follows:
Be sure all comments and threads you post are respectful. Posts that contain any of the following content will be considered a violation of your agreement as a member of the Alpha Software Forum Community and will be moderated:
If a thread or post is found to contain any of the content outlined above, a moderator may choose to take one of the following actions:
Moderators may also rename posts and threads if they are too generic or do not property reflect the content.
Moderators may move threads if they have been posted in the incorrect forum.
Threads/Posts questioning specific moderator decisions or actions (such as "why was a user banned?") are not allowed and will be removed.
The owners of Alpha Software Corporation (Forum Owner) reserve the right to remove, edit, move, or close any thread for any reason; or ban any forum member without notice, reason, or explanation.
Community members are encouraged to click the "Report Post" icon in the lower left of a given post if they feel the post is in violation of the rules. This will alert the Moderators to take a look.
Alpha Software Corporation may amend the guidelines from time to time and may also vary the procedures it sets out where appropriate in a particular case. Your agreement to comply with the guidelines will be deemed agreement to any changes to it.
Bonus TIPS for Successful Posting
Try a Search First
It is highly recommended that a Search be done on your topic before posting, as many questions have been answered in prior posts. As with any search engine, the shorter the search term, the more "hits" will be returned, but the more specific the search term is, the greater the relevance of those "hits". Searching for "table" might well return every message on the board while "tablesum" would greatly restrict the number of messages returned.
When you do post
First, make sure you are posting your question in the correct forum. For example, if you post an issue regarding Desktop applications on the Mobile & Browser Applications board , not only will your question not be seen by the appropriate audience, it may also be removed or relocated.
The more detail you provide about your problem or question, the more likely someone is to understand your request and be able to help. A sample database with a minimum of records (and its support files, zipped together) will make it much easier to diagnose issues with your application. Screen shots of error messages are especially helpful.
When explaining how to reproduce your problem, please be as detailed as possible. Describe every step, click-by-click and keypress-by-keypress. Otherwise when others try to duplicate your problem, they may do something slightly different and end up with different results.
A note about attachments
You may only attach one file to each message. Attachment file size is limited to 2MB. If you need to include several files, you may do so by zipping them into a single archive.
If you forgot to attach your files to your post, please do NOT create a new thread. Instead, reply to your original message and attach the file there.
When attaching screen shots, it is best to attach an image file (.BMP, .JPG, .GIF, .PNG, etc.) or a zip file of several images, as opposed to a Word document containing the screen shots. Because Word documents are prone to viruses, many message board users will not open your Word file, therefore limiting their ability to help you.
Similarly, if you are uploading a zipped archive, you should simply create a .ZIP file and not a self-extracting .EXE as many users will not run your EXE file.
- Be professional in your conduct
- Be kind to others
- Be constructive when giving feedback
- Be open to new ideas and suggestions
- Stay on topic
Be sure all comments and threads you post are respectful. Posts that contain any of the following content will be considered a violation of your agreement as a member of the Alpha Software Forum Community and will be moderated:
- Spam.
- Vulgar language.
- Quotes from private conversations without permission, including pricing and other sales related discussions.
- Personal attacks, insults, or subtle put-downs.
- Harassment, bullying, threatening, mocking, shaming, or deriding anyone.
- Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, or otherwise discriminatory jokes and language.
- Sexually explicit or violent material, links, or language.
- Pirated, hacked, or copyright-infringing material.
- Encouraging of others to engage in the above behaviors.
If a thread or post is found to contain any of the content outlined above, a moderator may choose to take one of the following actions:
- Remove the Post or Thread - the content is removed from the forum.
- Place the User in Moderation - all posts and new threads must be approved by a moderator before they are posted.
- Temporarily Ban the User - user is banned from forum for a period of time.
- Permanently Ban the User - user is permanently banned from the forum.
Moderators may also rename posts and threads if they are too generic or do not property reflect the content.
Moderators may move threads if they have been posted in the incorrect forum.
Threads/Posts questioning specific moderator decisions or actions (such as "why was a user banned?") are not allowed and will be removed.
The owners of Alpha Software Corporation (Forum Owner) reserve the right to remove, edit, move, or close any thread for any reason; or ban any forum member without notice, reason, or explanation.
Community members are encouraged to click the "Report Post" icon in the lower left of a given post if they feel the post is in violation of the rules. This will alert the Moderators to take a look.
Alpha Software Corporation may amend the guidelines from time to time and may also vary the procedures it sets out where appropriate in a particular case. Your agreement to comply with the guidelines will be deemed agreement to any changes to it.
Bonus TIPS for Successful Posting
Try a Search First
It is highly recommended that a Search be done on your topic before posting, as many questions have been answered in prior posts. As with any search engine, the shorter the search term, the more "hits" will be returned, but the more specific the search term is, the greater the relevance of those "hits". Searching for "table" might well return every message on the board while "tablesum" would greatly restrict the number of messages returned.
When you do post
First, make sure you are posting your question in the correct forum. For example, if you post an issue regarding Desktop applications on the Mobile & Browser Applications board , not only will your question not be seen by the appropriate audience, it may also be removed or relocated.
The more detail you provide about your problem or question, the more likely someone is to understand your request and be able to help. A sample database with a minimum of records (and its support files, zipped together) will make it much easier to diagnose issues with your application. Screen shots of error messages are especially helpful.
When explaining how to reproduce your problem, please be as detailed as possible. Describe every step, click-by-click and keypress-by-keypress. Otherwise when others try to duplicate your problem, they may do something slightly different and end up with different results.
A note about attachments
You may only attach one file to each message. Attachment file size is limited to 2MB. If you need to include several files, you may do so by zipping them into a single archive.
If you forgot to attach your files to your post, please do NOT create a new thread. Instead, reply to your original message and attach the file there.
When attaching screen shots, it is best to attach an image file (.BMP, .JPG, .GIF, .PNG, etc.) or a zip file of several images, as opposed to a Word document containing the screen shots. Because Word documents are prone to viruses, many message board users will not open your Word file, therefore limiting their ability to help you.
Similarly, if you are uploading a zipped archive, you should simply create a .ZIP file and not a self-extracting .EXE as many users will not run your EXE file.
See more
See less
Can I do this in Alpha Five?
Collapse
X
-
RE: Can I do this in Alpha Five?
Robert,
I was intrigued by using the above methodology and put together a little test app to see if it would actually work. So if my explanation left something to be desired, try this little test app. There is one form to print the report, and that must be used to have it work properly.
John
Leave a comment:
-
RE: Can I do this in Alpha Five?
Hello James:
Yesterday I only had time to respond to John's suggestion, but I wanted to take a moment to let you know I appreciated your idea and it still sounds to me as if it could be an excellent solution. I really haven't had time to focus upon your idea, but if nothing else, it helped get me moving in the right direction. It is indeed a very interesting option.
Thanks,
Robert
Leave a comment:
-
RE: Can I do this in Alpha Five?
Robert,
"I just cannot figure out where the page number is coming from".
I'm assuming that you will have some kind of a connection between a beat assignement and an officer. Then you will print a report by beat or shift, that will show the assignment description and the assigned officer ( 3,4 or more pages, it doesn't matter. Certain officers will appear on certain pages, because of theri assignments.
At the time you print the report, you will feed the following expression to the UDF function:
Officer_ID + STR(System->PageNumber) via a calculated report field.
Thus you are telling the function who the officer is and what page he appears on by simply placing the calculated field containg the UDF in the detail section of the report.
The function does the work, the calculated field in the report activates the function as each beat assignment is printed.
More code in the function will allow you to save this info to a table, record by record, as the report is being printed. Once the assignment report is completed, you will have a list of all officers who appeared on the report and the page number that they appeared on. It's only as current as the last time you printed the assignment report. No advance logic is necessary to associate an asignment or an officer to a report page number. The association would be automatically generated as the report was printed.
John
Leave a comment:
-
RE: Can I do this in Alpha Five?
Hello John:
That is a very innovative solution, however, I'm stil confused by your determination of the page number, especially in terms of getting the page the officer had the last time he/she worked. I think if I could grasp what you mean, or where you are getting this page number, this suggestion could be a winner. Maybe it's obvious to everyone else, but I just cannot figure out where the page number is coming from.
Robert
Leave a comment:
-
RE: Can I do this in Alpha Five?
Robert,
My thinking is that you could populate a table, using the above described function, with two fields, an officerid field and a page number ( substrings of the calculated field sent to the function ). This table would then have the page number that a particular officer had the last time the report was printed ( regardless of the printer, orientation or fonts ). The only requirement is that the index page be printed after the main assignment report.
This table could be linked one to one to an officer table with the officer id as the link. Then when you printed the alpha sort of officers, you could print the page number from the table populated with the function. I assume that a given officer could have a different assignment or a different shift on a given day and that they could potentially be on different pages on certain days. That would not matter, because the function would capture the ID and the page each time the report is printed. If it works, it might be a more flexible solution to the problem.
John
Leave a comment:
-
RE: Can I do this in Alpha Five?
Hello John:
That's an interesting concept but what did you use to determine the page number? I was thinking of using a page code next ot each name for every officer listed on page 1, page 2, or page 3.
Robert
Leave a comment:
-
RE: Can I do this in Alpha Five?
Robert,
I did a little test on the method I described above:
I created a UDF ZZZ_REPORT:
function ZZZ_REPORT as C(CLINUMBER as C)
TRACE.WRITELN(CLINUMBER)
end function
In the report I created a calculated field with expression:ZZZ_REPORT(Cli_No + STR(System->PageNumber))
I dragged this calculated field into the detail section of the report.
What showed up in the trace window was a list of the clients with the page number they were printed on. There were two or three extra items out there that could be easily omitted and the very first record showed up twice ( also not a problem).It seems that if the trace output were written to a table, you could dynamically create the Alpha page index you are looking for.
Basically it seemed to work.
John
Leave a comment:
-
RE: Can I do this in Alpha Five?
I have never before tried using Alpha Five as a replacement for what is usually accomplised by using a Word processor. But it appeared as if Alpha Five would be far more efficient at solving this problem, but with no previous experience in this area, I had no idea where or how to begin. I knew some of the guys on this board would come up with some terrific, innovative solutions and now my mind is churning as I am trying to see which solution, or combination of solutions, will work best. At this point in time, I'm confident this can be done.
Let me throw in one additional factor that might help with a possible solution.
There are currently two types of details printed at headquarters, special details that occur maybe 8 - 10 times a year, and a DAILY detail that is essentially the same every day. The daily detail, which is my first priority, is a 3-page detail that is broken down as follows:
Page 1: 12-hour midnight shift officers
Page 2: 12-hour day work shift officers
Page 3: 12-hour tenative midnight shift for the next day.
So this detail always has exactly 3 pages written via MS Word. All officers assigned to midnights are on Page 1, while all officers assigned to day work are on Page 2, and tomorrow's tenative midnight detail is on Page 3. Maybe this addtiional information will spark an even easier solution?
Then there are special details, such as demonstrations in Washington, DC with much larger numbers of officers. Those special details may vary from 6 to 12 pages.
Thanks for all of your ideas so far,
Robert
Leave a comment:
-
RE: Can I do this in Alpha Five?
Robert:
I forgot to mention. Maintain the page number+line number in a separate table this will give you control. readit, update it, and use the new number for the report.
I hope this helps
bob adler
Leave a comment:
-
RE: Can I do this in Alpha Five?
Robert:
I would make some pre-defined design consideations.
1- You can know exactly how many detail lines will be printed per page per individual. Lets say two lines.
2- create a dbf that contains the required fields for each possible assignment for each day. Include a field for page number+line number.
3- Create your own autoincrement logic for the page number+line numbe field. start at 101(page 1, line1). Pass the file alphabetcially. and assign numbers. record 2 is 102, record 3 is 103. When you reach the maximum line number for a page. adjust field for next record to 201. and begin proces again.
When finished you will have a page and line number for each person to be printed.
4- Create report as need to for First pages(alphabetically) and Detail pages in page number+line number sequence.
I hope this helps.
bob adler
Leave a comment:
-
Guest repliedRE: Can I do this in Alpha Five?
Robert,
With a little formatting, one might know how many records per page. With a little counting, one might know the numbered position on page one an employee would be. If one did a little more chasing, the number of the page would reveal itself at print time.
Other way: if emplyee A is number 73 on page one and each page holds 11 assignments, then employee A might be found on page 8?
Good Luck
Dave
Leave a comment:
-
RE: Can I do this in Alpha Five?
Robert,
You could try something like this. Create a UDF that accepts an alpha and numeric argument. Hopefully the alpha is the employee id and the numeric is the page number. In the function do something like a trace command to see the results after report printing.
In the report define a calculated field that uses that UDF function. Try feeding as arguments the value of the employee id and the page number variable in the function. Try placing it in the report where the job description is printed.
If you get the desired info in the trace window from the function, put some code to write this out to some records that will be the basis of the report page index. If this works, you would print the main report first and the index report second.
Ira talked about this methodology. The problem may be the lack of consistency as to when and how often the function fires. The availability of the page number at that time may also be a problem.
In essence, you are creating, or trying to create, a kind of pseudo event with a UDF. Might be worth a try because if it does work, it should be independent of different printer and fonts, and not care if you use variable sized memos as job descriptions.
John
Leave a comment:
-
RE: Can I do this in Alpha Five?
While this process would not automate the process completely, I think I would do something like this:
Print report
Ask user how many pages in report
Get list array of all officers names
Have user choose which officer's info ends on the first page
Have A5 mark all officers (alphabetically)
Leave a comment:
-
RE: Can I do this in Alpha Five?
Hello Robert,
>>Do you think I can do this in Alpha Five?
Leave a comment:
Leave a comment: