RE: printing boilerplate info on a form

Quit designing applications to be edited on 5250 screens. IOW, why use
multiple 78 character fields just because that can fit on an 80 column
screen? When a 'text' field in html is one line of code versus the
gyrations you go through in DDS and processing that. I agree that the
multiple fields is tough to insert/delete and get the other lines to join
in the fun. If you decide to stick with 5250 then make it one big field.
It can be done, but it's been years since I've did it. We did that when
OV/400 was dropped and we started sticking our text back into data. So
that's been awhile.

Then you still have the printing issue. How much can you print on a line?
Is that proportional or fixed format? You've already figured this out.
If you simply say 'do 80 characters per line' it may not look right if the
first line has a large percentage of skinny characters and the second line
has a large percentage of wide characters. Perhaps something like looping
through the print data with
PrintLine=StripProportionally(PrintText:x);
But you'd have to roll your own StripProportionally.

You just may be better off with the suggested page segment solution. Or
custom forms software with a little trial and error via manual setup on
the occasions that they change the text. Does it really happen that
often?



Rob Berendt