lists as... lists, numbered groups, and padding in MS Word emitter

Tatome

Hi,

I just started designing reports with BIRT and I've come across a few problems when creating MS Word documents. I guess they must be common problems, but I didn't really find any solutions that worked for me, so I'd be really grateful if somebody could shed some light on some of them.

1. I'd like to render (BIRT-style) lists as enumerations. What I mean is that I'd like something like
1. This
2. That
3. The other
to be formated in the output document as an actual list, so the report can be edited and a user can press enter after "That" and Word will change the number before "The other" to 4.

2. When I create a table from a data set, I'd like my groups to be numbered. I read somewhere that Total.runningCount() is the way to go, but it doesn't seem to work for me. Suppose I have a simple data set like, e.g. for "SELECT * FROM CLASSICMODELS.CUSTOMERS", and I create a table that is grouped by the field "STATE". When I insert a dynamic text field in the group header and set the value expression to "Total.runningCount(x)", I get all 0s for x=0 and row.__rownum + 1 for x > 0. "Total.runningCount(1,null,x)", which I saw mentioned somewhere gives me a blank column.

3. In a table, I'd like to have the leftmost details column's contents indented by, say 1ems. Just setting the value for padding-left in the editor works fine... for preview and HTML output, but not for MS Word; the emitter seems to just ignore the padding property.

Again, I'd be grateful for suggestions on any one of these questions.

Cheers,
Johannes

mwilliams

Hi Johannes,

For numbering your groups in your table, if I'm understanding what you're wanting correctly, you should be able to drop a data binding in your group header with an expression that increments a variable each time and then displays the new value.

Let me know.