problem with form and printer file...I think

[Nancy Palmquist]

Fairlight wrote:
> When asked his whereabouts on Mon, Jul 09, 2007 at 03:24:17PM -0400,
> Fairlight took the fifth, drank it, and then slurred:
> 
>>However, another interesting facet is that I thought, "Okay, let's just try
>>incremental filenames."  I inserted a counter and a reset of the printer
>>filename.  I get two 27byte files and a third 1784 byte file.  The third
>>large one is the actual page I get when using FORM.  The first two times
>>through, it just spits out what I assume to be the init string for the
>>printer.  It looks like it, starting with ESC-E and all...it's obviously
>>longer, but there's no page contents to those files.
> 
> 
> 26 bytes.  I wasn't looking directly at it at the time I wrote the email.
> 
> 
>>Then I checked docs.  FORM is supposedly only for clerk.  It's -working- in
>>report, I'm not kidding.  The main report that I've copied is used from
>>clerk, but I'm using it from report and it's actually printing.  I wonder
>>if that's not part of my 23-byte page problem though.
> 
> 
> And no, it's not working.  I'm using -f, which is telling it to use the
> format--which it does...once.  It's not FORM/FORMM that's working, it's the
> -F because I forgot to use -FP.  If I use -FP, I get one 26 byte file,
> period.
> 
> My mistake.  (You can tell how often I mess with output in the *report
> sense, right?)
> 
> Currently looking for a way to emulate -sr 1 in *clerk.  I seem to recall
> something about using @once processing.  I'll try it.
> 
> mark->
Mark,

FORM and FORMM are *Clerk only stuff.

If you want to generate varied layouts, determined by data you will have 
to make a generic form - with dummy fields (or one honking big field 
(80*66) to load the data in the varied ways necessary.  No form names 
are changed, you just change what prints.

Handy for letters and the like, not real great for complex forms.

To print completely different forms, in a batch mode, it must be done 
from clerk.

Either sit on one record somewhere and fetch all the data for printing 
and issue the FORM or FORMM commands, or move from record to record in a 
clerk process to do the same on each record.

Results are stunning if the programming is a little kludgey.

Nancy

-- 
Nancy Palmquist 		MOS & filePro Training Available
Virtual Software Systems	Web Based Training and Consulting	
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