Re: external *PRTF

["David Morris" <dmorris@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Simon, Jon, Joel, & others,

You all make very good arguments, I would go a step further.  Reports follow 
the same general 
pattern.  They have headings, page numbers, columns, spaces, overflow, etc.  It 
makes more 
sense to me to support those common features in common routines.  This makes it 
a lot more 
reasonable to support the advanced printing functionality because you are not 
required to 
understand the details associated with creating boxes, font sizes, calculating 
overflow etc.

A while back I created a framework to support these common elements that 
precludes the use of 
single purpose dds printer files.  The description of reports is stored in 
database files.  The first 
version used internal printer files because it was simpler.  The latest version 
uses one external 
printer file so that we could take advantage of things like boxes, fonts, etc.

David Morris

>>> shc@flybynight.com.au 04/10/00 07:33PM >>>

...Aside from the good engineering aspect of externalising EVERYTHING the major 
benefit to 
external printer files is that they are printer independant...

Regards,
Simon Coulter.

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