Subject Re: Two column Report From Ruth Bromer <ruth@treklite.com> Date Sun, 14 Jul 2019 19:37:19 -0400 Newsgroups dbase.getting-started Fortunately, I have a laser printer, or at least it outputs the paper face down in order. As far as the comments go, you're right.  It's not really necessary and some people are verbose in their comments.  200 characters is sufficient for my purposes.  Where I might really care about the comments is on the form that I have for each competitor where I can see what they entered and make changes.  At the moment, if someone has a change, I can go into their original registration and change things, apparently except for the t-shirt fields that weren't originally there.  So, I won't worry about that detail. I'm sorry to hear that you are not feeling well.  I hope you will be getting better soon. Ruth On 7/14/2019 4:16 AM, Mervyn Bick wrote: > On 2019-07-14 2:46 AM, Ruth Bromer wrote: >> Wow, Mervyn.  This is fantastic!  You must really love doing this.   >> The report works beautifully.  I'm going to study it to see what you did. >> > > I can never resist a challenge. :-) > > One thing to bear in mind is that the sort order depends on whether you > are going to print on a laser printer or an inkjet printer. > > Laser printers output the pages printed side down.  Inkjet printers > output the pages printed side up. > > Most (all?) inkjet printer drivers offer the facility to print in > reverse order but this can take a while.  It is better to create the > document in the correct order to start with. > > If you are going to be printing on an inkjet printer you will need to > change the query's sql statement to order the records in descending order. > > sql = "select p.*,n.print_order from packet p inner join packet_names n > on p.name = n.name order by print_order desc" > > I've come across what is potentially a much bigger problem.  You have > allowed 200 characters for the notes field. The maximum allowable is 254 > but two of the notes for the Burkheads are well over that. One is over > 900 characters.  There is, therefore, not much point in changing the 200 > to 254. > > To allow the full contents of the notes field to be printed the field > needs to be changed to a memofield.  There should be enough space > available on the report to accommodate notes of that size. > > Changing the field type is not a problem but the dBASE > append...delimited command doesn't work with memofields so it means > writing a new program to import the competitor.csv file into > competitor.dbf. > > This does have advantages in that it is simple to get rid of the first > record in the .csv file which contains the field names.  It is also > relatively simple to deal with any null values in the .csv file. > > If you feel that the change is important I'll have a go at it.  I have a > copy of competitor.dbf but I would need a raw (unedited) copy of > competitor.csv.   The problem is time.  I haven't been well for a while > so I can't spend as much time at the computer as I'd like.  This means I > can't promise how long this will take. > > In as much as the notes field is not there to convey information from > you to the competitor another option is simply not to print the notes > field at all.  If you set the printable property of the text object on > the footerband false the note will appear on screen but it won't be > shown on the printed page.  That way there is no need to make any other > changes to the report. > > Mervyn. > > > > > > >