Tony was gracious with his FocalPoint thread All I want for Christmas ........ (within Dev Studio), I'll be blunt.

Based on this thread Two columns with one column title I thought I'd open up my brand spanking new Dev Studio and use the GUI to build an example to use HEADALIGN=BODY in the Heading. Well, I can't find HEADALIGN anywhere in the GUI tool. There is an Alignment Grid, but that's not what I'm looking for.

I inserted spot markers between the words in the Page Heading using Properties > Insert Spotmarker... (what are the ... for?) and the spot markers were added but you can't see them unless you look at the source tab. How do you know there are spot-markers in the heading when looking at the report in the GUI?

Once I added the spot-markers, I thought I'd try using POSITION since I can't find HEADALIGN, but Position is disabled when I try applying it via Properties > Position.

What am I doing wrong?

If you select something in your heading, right click, and then select Align... You will get a dialog box with some options. If you click OK,

  TYPE=HEADING,
     HEADALIGN=BODY,
$ 

will be added to your report.

Thank you very much - that took care of the HEADALIGN issue.

It's funny, when I did a search in Help from Dev Studio, it pointed me to "Creating Reports With WebFOCUS Language > Using Headings, Footings, Titles, and Labels > Aligning a Heading or Footing Element in an HTML Report".

When I clicked on "Creating Reports With Graphical Tools > Styling Reports With the Report Painter > Aligning Fields and Text in Headings and Footings" all I got was something about the "Alignment Grid".

I don't find any documentation about the "Align" option when right-clicking a piece of text in the Page Heading...

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Francis Mariani,

There's a reason this forum is so active...

The Position option is available for PDF output. It's used together with spot markers to separate the text strings in headings, footings, subheadings, subfootings. You could type a text string, right-click on it and position it, or add a spot marker between two text strings, then position each individually.

There is documentation on page 310 at this link: http://documentation.informationbuilders.com/masterinde...61crgt/wf761crgt.pdf

The align option is for HTML, also available by right-clicking after selecting the text string. The documentation is also in the above document, on page 214.

-- Jamie

Thanks Jamie.

By the way, I can see "Spotmarkers" by selecting View > Show Markers.

Well Francis let me know if you ever do Dialog Manager in the GUI. Why one would ever use it...I haven't figured out. Just open up and type.

Doing things like precision reports by hand can be very difficult...

I think most of us use the GUI to get some base stuff going and then hand code around it.

Why can't the GUI tool handle comments wherever they're put?

*SIGH*

I believe that if/when the Report Painter will handle Dialog Manager it will handle comments as well.

quote:

Originally posted by ChannyS:
Doing things like precision reports by hand can be very difficult...

I think most of us use the GUI to get some base stuff going and then hand code around it.

To be honest coding from scratch is my preferred method, we rarely have a need to use the painter...

quote:

Why can't the GUI tool handle comments wherever they're put?

the problem is with the painter and DM is how would it represent it? we use a lot of DM to change report output formatting and i feel it could be quite hard to visually represent the prodecudural element of DM (like GOTOs and labels) as sufficiently complex reports are like 'spaghetti code'

comments could be handled though- they could give you the option to right click a report element and add a comment to it- the comment could then be put above the code for that element in the text editor...

without such a function i don't how else they would handle comments and it makes sense that they get shoved to the top of the report because once in painter it doesn't know what lines they should be (although if they were originally entered against a certain line in the editor theres no reason it shouldn't retain it)- perhaps there could be an option that if the code was produced first in the editor the comments are not moved if the code is then opened in painter -its a toughy- comments should not be moved about but if the comment was added outside of the text editor what line number should it go to?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: nubi,

Nubi,

You are right, these are all challenges they will have to address but I believe that they can be addressed if/when they start supporting dialog manager.

quote:

You are right, these are all challenges they will have to address but I believe that they can be addressed if/when they start supporting dialog manager.

Im not representing the offical word of IB or Dimitri but i believe they already support DM

They support DM in the report painter?

no Channy they don't but as i explained in my previous mail how would they?

quote:

Originally posted by ChannyS:
There's a reason this forum is so active...

Great answer!!!

For example how would the following DM get displayed in the painter?:

 
-SET &DUMMY = &FLAG.(<Country,COUNTRY> <Body,BODYTYPE> <Model,MODEL>)

TABLE FILE CAR
SUM RCOST 

-IF &FLAG NE 'COUNTRY' THEN NOCOUNTRY
BY COUNTRY 

-NOCOUNTRY
-IF &FLAG NE 'BODYTYPE' THEN NOBODY
BY BODY
-NOBODY
-IF &FLAG NE 'MODEL' THEN NOMODEL

BY MODEL
-NOMODEL
END
EXIT 

answers on a postcard please

You can do this, then it works also....

-SET &DUMMY = &FLAG.(<Country,COUNTRY> <Body,BODYTYPE> <Model,MODEL>)

TABLE FILE CAR
SUM RCOST
BY &DUMMY
END 
-EXIT

BTW there is a "-" needed before the EXIT.....

I like your solution Frank...

I think nubi is trying to get at the overall as to how the Report Painter could handle DM. I can't share much but I think there could be ways. In a small, controlled way, it does already exist. If you choose the "User" option for output format type, they create different DM blocks for the different stylesheets for each output format that you create and they allow you to switch between them. As I said, this is a small, controlled subset of DM, but it does exist.

I may be mistaken, but I think DM is supported, PROVIDED it is outside a TABLE FILE... or DEFINE FILE... That is one of the main reasons that I do not use the GUI.The other reason is that I used FOCUS long before GUIs were available. Just more comfortable cding by hand. I do use the GUI for formatting and styling. For that, I create a 'dummy' focexec that will open in the GUI, format and style it, and then cut and paste the generated code into my real Focexec. And all that because my DM-rich Focexec cannot be opened in the GUI.

I like coding because you get so much overview. In one page you see all your join's define's and tables without any unnecessary styling code! In the GUI you need to open every component to add, change or check.

Frank it wasn't an example of what i'd do- our reports are far more complex then introducing a different BY field but i wasn't about to write out a whole CAR example...so my question remains- how would something 'like' that be graphially represented

quote:

Originally posted by FrankDutch:
You can do this, then it works also....

-SET &DUMMY = &FLAG.(<Country,COUNTRY> <Body,BODYTYPE> <Model,MODEL>)

TABLE FILE CAR
SUM RCOST
BY &DUMMY
END 
-EXIT

BTW there is a "-" needed before the EXIT.....

ah you understand, to be honest ive not used the painter since my first training session so you probably know more about it than me- i tend to agree with Frans, coding gives you more control- get used to coding and you'll never go back to the painter...

quote:

Originally posted by ChannyS:
I like your solution Frank...

I think nubi is trying to get at the overall as to how the Report Painter could handle DM. I can't share much but I think there could be ways. In a small, controlled way, it does already exist. If you choose the "User" option for output format type, they create different DM blocks for the different stylesheets for each output format that you create and they allow you to switch between them. As I said, this is a small, controlled subset of DM, but it does exist.