Trying to do a report with MERGE processor

1st page has a FOOTER on it

on the 2nd page i would like to modify the FOOTER length

so i need to change the Bottom Paramter on the fly

WHERE DO I FIND THIS PARAMTER IN MEMORY

AS MERGE IS RUNNING AND CAN I CHANGE IT.

I've never used FOOTING much, but after looking around, the only place I could find it was in SYSCOM. (system common). RTI has kept that to themselves so that we (??? Hmm… I don't know whay.).

Larry Wilson

tardis@earthlink.net

P.S. if it helps, it's variable 114 in SYSCOM, but some that come before are DIMmed, so I'm not sure how you'd find that using PEEK.

Larry Wilson

tardis@earthlink.net

Could you change the report so that instead of using a footer you used a symbolic of sorts, such that it would be recalced on each 'page'?

On the other hand, REVSOURCE has the source to MERGE and I don't see any syscom references in there, just in FOOTER.TXT, which appears to be a standard variable. I don't recall anything from SYSCOM being in merge, except maybe the get current printer stuff, if that was even there.

akaplan@sprezzatura.com

Sprezzatura, Inc.

Doesn't use SysCom to the best of my knowledge - all standard Merge common. We did have a REVMEDIA article on it but I'm at home so not here. Feel free to post.

amcauley@sprezzatura.com

Sprezzatura Ltd

World Leaders in all things RevSoft

As requested:

From Revmedia V1I5A4:

As the sophistication of our user base grows, so does the sophistication of

their demands. A recent case in point was a client who had a twin-bin feeder

on their laser printer and who wanted a MERGE document to print first page

on headed paper and then second page (and all subsequent pages) on

continuation paper.

This obviously involved swapping printer bins with the appropriate escape

sequence using a ] and a ] command. (Just in case you hadn't

noticed, pressing F10 when in the MAKEMERGE window gives you the MERGE menu

and allows you to configure your printer etc.). The only problem with this

approach was that issuing a swap bin command to the laser printer caused a

form feed. This in itself was not a problem, but AREV was not aware that a

page throw had occurred and thus continued printing until it reached the end

of its logical page and then performed a form feed itself. Thus if we were

printing an 80 line document with a page length of 60 lines, and we swapped

bins after 40 lines, AREV printed a further 20 lines on the next page and

then form fed to print the final 20 lines on the third page.

This was really inconvenient. What was required was a ] command

to reset the line counter to 0 without printing a CHAR(12). Without access

to source, I can only suggest this as a possible enhancement - so short

term, I developed a solution to work around this problem.

In the object code for MERGE is contained a literal about "to process". By

experimenting I discovered that if you put a subroutine name preceded with

an @ sign into the PRINTER field on the MERGE document (NB @Routine.name NOT

@S Routine.name@), the partially formatted document is sent to your routine

NOT to the printer. The subroutine is passed two parameters, the id of the

record and the formatted text. All of the printer control commands are left

in], ], ] etc. but all paragraph formatting has been

done. We only need to process this data and ignore the form feeds, applying

our own page control logic. In fact this has much wider application. We

could do ANYTHING with the output, write it direct to a WP file, create a

fax file for pickup by JT-Fax - anything.

In addition to the information passed directly to the subroutine we also

need access to an area of system labelled common called MERGE. This labelled

common area has 26 parameters (I.E. COMMON / MERGE / A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,

L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W,X,Y,Z) which are as follows (where ??? is a variable

of unknown usage)

    A    Data File Name
    B    Dictionary File Variable
    C    ???
    D    Special Text Data File Name
    E    Top Margin
    F    Left Margin
    G    Page Width - (Left Margin + Right Margin)
    H    Page Height - (Top Margin + Bottom Margin)
    I    Default Format (Coded - 0=Noformat, !=Left, 2=filled)
    J    Heading
    K    Footing
    L    Formatted text - identical to second parameter passed
    M-P  ???
    Q    %FIELDS% of Data File
    R    File Variable of Special Text Data File
    S,T  ???
    U    Field mark delimited list of command options , ], ]
         etc.
    V    Field mark delimited list of printer control codes, ],
         ] etc.
    W    Special Merge Fields, MRG.DATE, MRG.TIME etc.
    X    ]
    Y    ]
    Z    ]

Thus our bin change logic could look something like (assuming HP.DESKJET

printer and bin changes in ] and ] and with apologies for

tersity of code)

<code>

  SUBROUTINE PRINT.MERGE(ID,TEXT)
       COMMON /MERGE/ A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W,X,Y,Z
       EQU PRN$          TO "HP.DESKJET"
       EQU PAGE.LEN$     TO 60
       PRIN.CODES=XLATE("MRG.PRINTER.CONFIG"'PRN$,"","X")
       * Get control codes for bin changes
       CODE=]" ; GOSUB GET.CODES ; BIN1=CODES
       CODE=]" ; GOSUB GET.CODES ; BIN2=CODES
       CTR=COUNT(TEXT,@FM) + (TEXT#"")
       FIRST.PASS=1 ; PRINTER ON ; PRINT BIN1 ; LINE.CTR= 0
       FOR LINE=1 TO CTR
            CL =TEXT ; NO.MORE.CHANGES=0
            LOOP UNTIL NO.MORE.CHANGES DO
                 QX=INDEX(CL,]" : ]]" ; S.COL2=COL2()
                       IF CODE=]" THEN CODE=" ELSE
                           GOSUB GET.CODES
                       END
                       CL=CL1,QX-1 : CODE : CLS.COL2+1,9999
                 END ELSE NO.MORE.CHANGES=1
            REPEAT
            PRINT CL ; LINE.CTR += 1
            IF LINE.CTR=PAGE.LEN$ THEN
                 IF FIRST.PASS THEN
                      PRINT BIN2 ; FIRST.PASS=0
                 END ELSE PRINT CHAR(12)
                 LINE.CTR=0 ; *Reset line count
            END
       NEXT
       PRINT CHAR(12) ; PRINTER OFF
  RETURN

  GET.CODES:
       LOCATE CODE IN V USING @FM SETTING POS THEN
            CODES="
            NEW.CTR=COUNT(PRIN.CODES," ") + 1
            FOR BX=1 TO NEW.CTR
                    CODES :=CHAR(FIELD(PRIN.CODES," ",BX))
            NEXT
       END
  RETURN

</code>

(Volume 1, Issue 5, Pages 4,9)

Thanks dude!

amcauley@sprezzatura.com

Sprezzatura Ltd

World Leaders in all things RevSoft

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