Okay, so I am knee-deep in creating a compound (PDF) report from scratch and I ran into a problem...

Fact is, I have a page-layout where at the top of the first page I put a smallish report containing a legend for the report following it. I'd like that report to follow the legend starting on the same page. With some searching, I found that you can define page-layout components to be "flowing" by using '*' for width and height, like this:

COMPONENT='report1', TEXT='report1', TOC-LEVEL=2, POSITION=(1.323 2.143), DIMENSION=(* *),
 METADATA='Z-INDEX: 100; POSITION: absolute; WIDTH: 23.283cm; HEIGHT: 7.938cm; OVERFLOW: auto; TOP: 2.143cm; LEFT: 1.323cm', $
COMPONENT='report2', TEXT='report2', TOC-LEVEL=2, POSITION=(1.323 10.610), DIMENSION=(* *),
 METADATA='Z-INDEX: 100; POSITION: absolute; WIDTH: 23.548cm; HEIGHT: 6.615cm; OVERFLOW: auto; TOP: 10.61cm; LEFT: 1.323cm', $

The bottom component however, tends to flow over to the next page(s). For some reason on those overflow pages, the report top isn't at the top of the page but instead is around where the legend report ended! Not what I had in mind. Any way to fix this?

I attempted to create a simple example, but the result got rather hilarious - WebFOCUS is really bad at overflowing content! Look at the result of this...

-* File compound_generated.fex
-* Default Mode: ResourceLayout
SET HTMLARCHIVE=ON
COMPOUND LAYOUT PCHOLD FORMAT PDF
UNITS=CM, $
OBJECT=TOC, NAME='TOC', TEXT='<font face="ARIAL" size=10 color=#000000>Table of Contents</font>', MARKUP=ON, TOC-NUMBERING=ON, POSITION=(0.476 2.117), DIMENSION=(18.759 17.145), font='ARIAL', color=RGB(0 0 0),  size=10, METADATA=' TOCTITLE: Table of Contents', $
SECTION=section1, LAYOUT=ON, METADATA='0.5^0.5^0.5^0.5^1', MERGE=OFF, ORIENTATION=PORTRAIT, PAGESIZE=A4,  $

PAGELAYOUT=ALL, NAME='Page Master', $
OBJECT=STRING, NAME='HeadingText', TEXT='<font face="ARIAL" size=14><center>Heading text</center></font>', POSITION=(0.476 0.635), MARKUP=ON, WRAP=ON, DIMENSION=(15.796 0.953), style=bold, METADATA='', $
OBJECT=STRING, NAME='page-number', TEXT='<font face="ARIAL" size=10><ibi-page-number/></font>', POSITION=(18.494 20.003), MARKUP=ON, WRAP=ON, DIMENSION=(1.799 0.318),  METADATA='', $
COMPONENT='DfltCmpt2', POSITION=(0 0), DIMENSION=(0 0), $

PAGELAYOUT=1, NAME='Page layout 1', text='Page layout 1', TOC-LEVEL=1, BOTTOMMARGIN=0.5, TOPMARGIN=0.5, ORIENTATION=PORTRAIT, METADATA='BOTTOMMARGIN=0.5,TOPMARGIN=0.5,LEFTMARGIN=0,RIGHTMARGIN=0,ORIENTATION=LANDSCAPE,', $
COMPONENT='report1', TEXT='report1', TOC-LEVEL=2, POSITION=(1.323 2.143), DIMENSION=(* *), METADATA='Z-INDEX: 100; POSITION: absolute; WIDTH: 23.283cm; HEIGHT: 7.938cm; OVERFLOW: auto; TOP: 2.143cm; LEFT: 1.323cm', $
COMPONENT='report2', TEXT='report2', TOC-LEVEL=2, POSITION=(1.323 10.610), DIMENSION=(* *), METADATA='Z-INDEX: 100; POSITION: absolute; WIDTH: 23.548cm; HEIGHT: 6.615cm; OVERFLOW: auto; TOP: 10.61cm; LEFT: 1.323cm', $
END
SET COMPONENT='DfltCmpt2'
TABLE FILE SYSCOLUM
" "
SUM TBNAME NOPRINT
IF READLIMIT EQ 1
ON TABLE SET PREVIEW ON
ON TABLE SET PAGE-NUM NOLEAD
ON TABLE PCHOLD FORMAT PDF
ON TABLE SET STYLE *
END
SET COMPONENT='report1'
-*component_type report
TABLE FILE CAR
PRINT CAR
BY COUNTRY
END
SET COMPONENT='report2'
-*component_type report
TABLE FILE CAR
PRINT CAR
BY COUNTRY
ON TABLE HOLD AS CAR0 FORMAT FOCUS INDEX COUNTRY CAR
END
-RUN

TABLE FILE CAR
PRINT CAR
BY COUNTRY
ON TABLE HOLD AS CAR00 FORMAT FOCUS INDEX COUNTRY CAR
END
-RUN

JOIN COUNTRY IN CAR0 TAG X1 TO MULTIPLE COUNTRY IN CAR0 TAG X2 AS J0
JOIN COUNTRY IN CAR0 TO MULTIPLE COUNTRY IN CAR00 TAG X3 AS J1
TABLE FILE CAR0
PRINT
 X2.COUNTRY
 X2.CAR
 X3.COUNTRY
 X3.CAR
BY X1.COUNTRY
BY X1.CAR
END
COMPOUND END

On WebFOCUS 7.6.11 that generates 3 blank pages and on the 4th page the content overflowing at the right side of the page is drawn straight over what was on the left side of the same page!
On 7.7 it's a little less bad, the TOC actually works and you don't get the blank pages, but it's still not drawn right!

Am I doing something wrong here?

Thats one of the reasons I stay away from it, or have each report formatted to exact sizes.

One interesting diversion...

Try changing the orientation and page size in section 1 definition to LANDSCAPE and A3, and see what happens.

Oh, I can predict what happens with A3. That way the contents would fit the page and not overwrite themselves.

That's actually what I did in one such case already, but it doesn't really help when the number and width of your across-columns isn't known beforehand. Sure, I can verify in the DB what the max count and widths would be at the moment, but people enter new data all the time and it will one day (probably sooner than later, Murphy is like that) start wrapping again...

Anyway, the real issue I was trying to solve is that my overflow pages don't start at the the top of the page. If I can solve that, I can at least produce a usable PDF report. If not, I'll just stick with HTML, but I think the users will see that as a regression over their old BO report.

From the looks of things the PDF report generation tools are a bit immature. Without applying diapers you end up with a mess, but the diapers are a bit unwieldy too.

Sounds familiar, but what about calculating in a first small report how many columns you need?
Once you know that, you might be able to split the report into 2, 3 or more sections and build those sections as separate reports?
This is something we did in a financial reporting that holds max 8 columns.