Converting to Graphical Reporting

[PxPlus]

Within PxPlus, there is a built-in logic to allow you to leave your print statements pretty much as is and output using a proportional font.

Take the following simple example:

0010 BEGIN
0020 OPEN (1)"*winprt*;normal"
0030 PRINT (1)'FONT'("Courier New",1),'DF',
0040 WHILE 1
0050 READ DATA COMPANY$,CUSTNO$,NAME$,ADDR$,OWES,END=*BREAK
0060 IF LINESLEFT<1 OR COMPANY$<>CURCOMP$ THEN GOSUB NEWPAGE
0070 PRINT (1)CUSTNO$,@(10),NAME$,@(40),ADDR$,@(70),OWES:"-$###,##0.00"
0080 LINESLEFT--
0090 WEND
0100 END
0110 !
0120 NEWPAGE:
0130 IF PAGENO<>0 THEN PRINT (1)'FF',
0140 PAGENO++
0150 PRINT (1)"Page:",PAGENO:"###0",@(30),"Client list for "+COMPANY$
0160 PRINT (1)
0170 PRINT (1)"Client",@(10),"Name",@(40),"Address",@(70),"Balance"
0180 PRINT (1)"------",@(10),DIM(20,"-"),@(40),DIM(20,"-"),@(70),"------------"
0190 PRINT (1)
0200 LET LINESLEFT=50
0210 LET CURCOMP$=COMPANY$
0220 RETURN
0230 DATA "ABC","000047","Cyclops Car Dealer","6675 Cherry",3.12
0240 DATA "ABC","000122","Global Undergarments","823 Maple Lodge Court",99.54
0250 DATA "ABC","000192","The Hungry Incorporated","5582 2nd Avenue",.55
0260 DATA "ABC","000295","The Hungry Magazine","8576 Major Mackenzie",71.74
0270 DATA "ABC","000310","New Dimensions Company","8052 Center Avenue",5.93
0280 DATA "ABC","000332","Cyclops Computing","7723 Fantasy Island",7.61
0290 DATA "DEF","000355","Kitty Kay Undergarments","2124 Major Mackenzie",4.55
0300 DATA "DEF","000385","New Age Importers","1743 Allstate Parkway",73.84
0310 DATA "DEF","000461","SOTA Golf club","4377 Major Mackenzie",63.66
0320 DATA "DEF","000555","Mike was here","8450 Buga-Buga Drive",11.43
0330 DATA "DEF","000598","Yorktown Body Shop","5674 One-way Street",8.53
0340 DATA "DEF","000874","Elephant Importers","8656 Main",74.63
0350 DATA "DEF","000899","Silly Walks Computing","3920 North Tacoma",60.31
0360 DATA "DEF","000978","Crimson Magazine","2303 Steep Hill Drive",86.16
0370 DATA "DEF","001072","Flagship Trading Limited","2782 Aurora Road",90.15
0380 DATA "DEF","001081","Snap Dragon Grocers","3682 East West Street",49.51

Basically the above is a simple print routine using a standard fixed width font. In order to pretty this report up you probably will want to use a proportional text.

Normally this would cause a problem because names and address in a proportional text occupy different widths but with PxPlus and if you are using the normal @(..) positioning the system will take care of this.

So change line 40 to

0030 PRINT (1)'FONT'("Arial",1),'DF',

The columns remain lined up. What's more is that PxPlus even detects the fact that you are printing numeric data for the balance column thus it right justifies aligning the data on the decimal point.

Now if you look at the output from the above you will notice that the dashed lines don't line up because a dash in Arial is not wide enough. You can fix this by adding a PRINT '+S' which replaces fields consisting of dashes, underscores, or equal signs with solid lines of the proper width, so line 30 becomes:

0030 PRINT (1)'FONT'("Arial",1),'DF','+S',

Internally the PxPlus logic is to re-position the output based on the CPI or average default character width whenever an @(..) is found. If the output is numeric the field will be right justified (aligned to last digit or decimal point) -- this will assure alignment if all numeric output contains a consistent format mask.

Another thing -- this logic supports 'BB'/'EB' to control BOLD print and 'BU'/'EU' for underscores. So try:

0150 PRINT (1)"Page:",PAGENO:"###0",@(30),'BU','BB',"Client list for "+COMPANY$,'EU','EB'

0170 PRINT (1)'BB',"Client",@(10),"Name",@(40),"Address",@(70),"Balance",'EB'

Using these built in features means you can clean up many of your reports -- perhaps just then having to change the page header to use a "Fancy" font.