Paging for both PDF & HTML

Hello, 
 
I have reports that might grow beyond 1 page in size horizontally. 
 
 
To test this I've done 2 things: 
 
1. Defined <property name="layoutPreference">auto layout</property> 
2. Define a very large table (something like 50 columns) in the report that will surly grow beyond page limits of the current defined size. 
 
 
When I export it to HTML I see perfect export: The data is nicely stretched to the left, browser allows scrolling. 
 
BUT export to pdf is completely broken, no text is readable. I would expect that BIRT would either export the report to more pages or split horizontally the export so that pdf would contain several pages the together would represent (fully) the data the is displayed in the HTML export. 
 
Any ideas on this subject? It seems to me like a common issue that surly got the attention of the dev team at some point. 
 
Thank you for helping, 
Maxim.

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Comments

mwilliams

Hi Maxim,

What version of BIRT are you using? Are you wanting your PDF to still be printable on standard paper? If this is not needed, you can go to the property editor of the master page and change the page size to a custom size to fit your table. Then, I believe it should work the same for PDF and HTML.

hq4ever

Hello mwilliams,

I'm using BIRT 2.5.1. Yet the PDF should be printable in A4 so simply defining page that is large enough will no be a valid solution in this case.

Does BIRT even support this working mode? This is marking requirements... to have the same behavior as excel for printing stuff that is bigger then 1 page

mwilliams

Maxim, 
 
I don't believe there's an option of horizontal page break on a standard table like with a crosstab because a standard table is not usually dynamic like a crosstab. For a table, with many columns, you could break those up into several tables designed to fit on a single page with readable column sizes all set up the same so that you have the corrrect values line up on all tables. You'd then just need to put a page break before to always on the extra tables to be sure they start on their own page. 
 
You could also reqest an enhancement for horizontal page breaks on tables at <a class='bbc_url' href='http://www.eclipse.org/birt/phoenix/reportabug.php'>BIRT: Reporting Bugs and Requesting Enhancements</a>.

hq4ever

OK, I appreciate your help.
I will file a enhancement report.

You say crosstab has support for this behaviour? Could you please describe in more details how a crosstab table growing beyond 1 A4 page width will be exported on PDF & HTML ?

Thank you very much,
Maxim.

mwilliams

Maxim, 
 
For a crosstab, you can go to the column area tab of the property editor and set a horizontal page break by the dimension. This feature was added because of the inability to know how many columns you may have. 
 
With a standard table, you usually know how many columns you'll have unless you build the table completely dynamically. So, with a table, you can create several tables with the same rules and setup using different columns in each table so that all columns are represented and can be printed for PDF. For doing both ways, a continuous table for HTML and broken up tables for PDF, you could create both ways and drop one depending on output. You can see how to drop a table in the devShare post below: 
 
<a class='bbc_url' href='http://www.birt-exchange.org/devshare/designing-birt-reports/1027-drop-a-table-based-on-a-report-parameter/#description'>Drop a Table Based on a Report Parameter - Designs & Code - BIRT Exchange</a>