RE: Re: Best document formatting language

> Yet it still suffers from what I've seen far too
> much of with HTML recently. I.e., printing it can
> cause the edges of the page to be cut off. Resizing
> the browser window doesn't adjust the display
> elements to fit in the new window dimensions.
> Sigh. HTML brought a markup language into general
> use that allowed the viewer to decide such things.
> Now many page designers are using types of absolute
> positioning that takes the ability away. Ah, well.
> Might as well use green-screen...

Yea, there are a few things to work out before I'd
endorse HTML as a comparable alternative to PCL
overlays, or PDF files.

Regarding absolute positioning, it seems that portrait
and landscape printing may be a good use of absolute
positioning, while designing pages to adjust according
to window size and resolution is better for on-line
inquiry.  PDF files use absolute positioning, for
example.

It might be helpful to view the student transcript
example in "print preview" mode.  Your browser may be
configured to insert document name and URL, or page
number or timestamp, which may be skewing the output.

If the report designer uses fonts that are available
on the workstation, and browser settings are
configured properly, the report should render nicely
in print, and print preview mode.

Dreamweaver, which I use for HTML layout, can show
vertical and horizontal rulers, scaled in inches,
which is nice for designing for portrait and landscape
printing.

If you take an opportunity to view the HTML source,
you might notice that report blocks are output in a
top to bottom stream, but the positioning of blocks is
specified in fractions of inches.

If you were using RPG to dynamically generate the
report, you might need to programmatically set the
top-left position of a report block, according to the
content of preceding blocks.  But that shouldn't be
too much different than executing page break logic
after a certain number of detail lines are written to
a spooling printer file.

Nathan Andelin


        
                
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