RE: Text on report

In addition to the good advice you received about placing the data in a file (and the bad advice about using eval / arrays), I will add my 2 cents.

There will probably be other reports with other text messages.  Pretty soon you will have a dozen files, all for the same purpose. 

If you create a file now with a key prefix, you can use the same file for all reports, and write only one maintenance program for them all.

Fields could be something like:

field-name    length
Msg_Group       10
Msg_seq         3 numeric
Msg_data        78

For the application you are working on today, the Msg_Group name could be "PURCH01", Msg_Seq would be 1 thru 12 for twelve lines of text, and the data is 78 long so it can fit on one line of a green screen.

As you add more apps, you can simply add more Msg_Group records.  For example if you need text on an invoice next month, add records where Msg_Group = "INVOICE".

You can add more flags onto the end of the file above too.  For example, maybe you want a flag such as Msg_Public  (Y/N)  so you can have some msgs for internal reports, and other msgs for public (customer) reports.

Also maybe you want a change date and used-id field, so you know who changed the msg and when.

-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Langston [mailto:jlangston@conexfreight.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 20, 2000 1:45 PM
To: RPG400-L@midrange.com
Subject: Text on report

I have a report to generate that has quite a bit of text on it.  A whole paragraph, basically.

I'm not using the reports, but O specs in my RPG program.  I know some would say, and probably rightfully so, to use a report program for this, but I want to do this in O specs.

My question is, how do you feel would be the best way to get this long text data into my program to print on the page?