I have a customer who wants to print output on a pre-printed invoice form. There will an indeterminate number of detail lines (never more than one page) and totals at the bottom in a specific box. There will be multiple invoices per run.

I have a number of ways of accomplishing this. Using a combination of HEADING and SUBHEAD/SUBFOOT is one way. Also, PDF Layout painter will work.

If anyone has a special technique for fitting data on pre-printed forms, I'd be interested in hearing about it.

Thanks in advance.............Steve

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

We do this quite frequently, and we have found no better way than trial and error. Print out your data elements and subtotals and then arrange,print,arrange,print, etc until they fit into the desired locations. They key is to use PDF output and make sure to turn SQUEEZE=OFF you so can set everything exactly as it needs to be.

There are multiple settings that can be manipulated to get what you need - Top/Bottom/Left/Right MARGIN, top/bottom/left/right GAP, font size,use of blank lines (in conjunction with changing font size) spot markers, POSITION=, WRAP=, WIDTH=,

For many of our forms we got tired of the process and the extra expense/hassle of preprinted forms so we moved to actually reproducing the form AS PART OF the PDF document. Using the newer line and box drawing features available in the stylesheets, as well as occasionally embedding images, we haven't found a form yet that couldn't be reproduced (and there are some pretty complex ones!)

I totally agree with Darin. Basically: print the Form AND Data as one “report”. CSS’s do the trick quite nicely (position: absolute; etc…). However, be sure to check out what may be reading the resultant form. By that, I mean: is the newly generated form being read by some automated process (scanned) which requires specific information in a specific position? If so, that process may need to be changed to handle the new form.

Check out the Precision Report Painter. There is a button on the 7.6.8 Dev. Studio tool bar. One caution is it doesn't do a good job of justifying text or numbers, so lineing up columns can be a problem.

Precision Report Painter - Is that a "new" name for Document Composer (PDF Layout Painter)? (a bit like EMR, FML, FMR etc. etc. etc.). One of the better moves for WF in recent times (imho).

If so then I couldn't agree more. I've recently created a multi page form with overflows that is so close to the original that it's difficult to tell the difference - the original was written using Crystal Reports.

As Doug suggests, lose the pre-printed stationery and achieve the whole using WF (although not with HTML as Doug intimates use PDF as you suggest). A good colour laser and your stationery supplier will be looking for new work, your company will (no doubt?) save money not only from stock holding but printing costs (which tends to cost more for small runs) and if the company logo changes they won't have stock of old forms that need to be dumped or recycled, and the change will be quick and painless. Any more advantages?

I would start off using the GUI as a learning process and then get into the code itself - it is very straight forward.

T

quote:

Precision Report Painter

It was the original name given to Pixel Perfect I believe.


Goes back to 7.1.0 only 39 hits on the internal IBI systems.

Never worked properly.

quote:

Never worked properly.

Hmmmm, does this apply to some other, more current, products I wonder?

T

The button in 7.6.8 syas 'Precision Report'. Go to Help and seach on that. In 7.6.2 you had to jump through a couple of hoops. It was documented in TM4625. It is NOT a new name for Document Composer/Layout Painter.

quote:

Hmmmm,

Did you know that if you put Hmmmm into google search you get twelve million six hundred thousand hits (12,600,000)

But if you type Hmmm you get forty seven million four hundred thousand (47,400,000) hits.

What is the correct spelling?

the way we do it here, cheating but works great,
we scan the image of the original form
then use precision to place the elements in the right boxes..the form.gif is then referenced in the pdf output in the TYPE=REPORT, so its the whole background.
works.
no ageda.
well, some ageda, but faster to develop.

quote:

What is the correct spelling?

It's proportional to the amount of head scratching required

T

good answer.

depends on how many m's you're licensed for.

Thanks for all the responses and good information. We are comparing using Precision Reports (PDF Layout Painter) and Excel Templates. Both can produce nice looking documents.

Steve

FYI, PDF Layout Painter is not Precision Report Painter. You get to the later from within Report Painter, in 7.6.8.
I don't know how to attach a screen print otherwise I would show it.

I think that Susannah's "form.gif" is another advantage, in reply to Tony's "Any more advantages?"

I think that Susanah's form.gif is a great advantage. You get to see your results on the screen without having to print it. I did a similar thing for US Bank with page borders.

That's the point I make Doug, there are so many advantages beyond just the ease of coding. I am sure there are many more, and they are the many reasons why the compound reporting syntax makes the output as good as, if not better, than what you can achieve in some other reporting tools. It has to be a serious contender for the single best product enhancement from IB in recent times (imho).

T

quote:

Precision Report Painter

Looks like we've some new Styling syntax to learn Guys! Only available outputs are DHTML, PDF and PS. New SET variables such as -
ON TABLE SET NEWLAYOUT ON
ON TABLE SET COMPOSITION DEFAULT

New style keywords such as METADATA, NAME, OBJECT, PARENT, DIMENSION it doesn't seem too far removed from the Layout Painter syntax. Still suffers from the image sourcing differences between (D)HTML and PDF though (e.g. Client and Reporting server sourcing - but then, some things never change )

GUI seems OK with a new (yes, I know, I did actually use it ), movable (non-dockable ) toolbox for Selection, Box, Line, Image and Text. More tools available on the right-hand side comprising seven tabs with normal culprits such as fields, columns, properties etc.

Shame the FONT list isn't restricted to available fonts within chosen output when selected but then I suppose that's a tricky one. I just know we're going to get "When I select Lucida Console for PDF output it shows some other font, even though it displays correctly on screen" questions!!

Just when I've got used to manually coding the new layout syntax too

T