Hi,

I am looking for some ideas for the following problem:

We build complex print reports for customer advisors by using compound PDF reports.

On one print page a number of completely different tables should be printed to fit the page in the best possible way. So, since each of these components are data-driven, each table can have a variable length. If we try to build a multi-page report consisting of such "multi-TABLE" pages we have problems to generate consistent page headings & footings.

Why? To add a page - heading / or page footing on a compound report page, one has to add the heading to the first TABLE on a page & the footing to the last TABLE.

The problem is, we don't really know how many lines each of these TABLEs generate. So we don't know prior to execution which of these TABLEs should hold the correct HEADING or FOOTING to meet the individual page's demands.

Webfocus, as far as we know, has not yet a feature to define a global heading & footing for a compound report, no matter how the individual TABLEs are designed.

If anybody has experiences with this problem it would be a great help!

Release: Webfocus 5.3.3 on NT.

Thanks
Werner

Maybe I should add the following: the whole thing is intended to work generic, that means no focus code (eg counting lines for the tables & deciding via dialog manager where to place headings & footings) should be necessary.

The idea is to create a renderservice, applications writing their data for print outputs into a flatfile and webfocus, by deciding what kind of data is delivered creates the complex report out of the individual parts (=segments), formatting it to optimal usage of page space. At least, this is what we try to do...