How To Implement a Preset Form Layout In BIRT

madereg

Hello,<br />
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<strong class='bbc'>Background on the problem:</strong> I'm in the process of creating a report that follows a preset form layout. The top portion of the report contains "boxes" which contain data from the dataset. The bottom portion contains a table of data. I've been able to implement the form/boxes without any problems using borders. The table portion contains five (5) columns of data with column headers. Each column of data is separated by vertical borders down to the bottom of the page with a total row at the bottom for one of the numeric columns of data. The last column of data can also wrap to multiple lines. This wrapping of multiple lines is random and based on the data. For example one row of data may appear on a single line while the next row might spread across 2 or 3 lines. The report can be multiple pages of fixed size (8.5" x 11") each. <br />
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<strong class='bbc'>The problem:</strong> The problem I am running into is with the table portion on the lower portion of the report. I'm actually having a couple of problems. The first problem I am having is with page breaking the table portion of the Form Report. With the last column of data having the potential of wrapping to multiple lines, I do not know exactly how many rows of data will actually fit in this lower table portion because of the last column of data being variable width in length. <br />
The second part of the problem is that the column borders need to extend all the way down to the bottom of the page and connect to the total row border. For example, one report might be only a single page in length with say 2 or 3 rows of data in the bottom portion of the report. The report would display all the appropriate data and the column borders would extend fully to the bottom of the report with basically blank rows. Another report might be several pages long. The top portion of the report would contain all the same data on each page but the bottom table portion of the report would contain the rows of data with say maybe the last page only containing a partially filled table but as before, the column borders need to extend to the bottom of the page.<br />
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Trying to get this Form Report to correctly format using BIRT has been quite a challenge. I am hoping that someone out there might have a solution that would work.<br />
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<strong class='bbc'>Version of BIRT being used:</strong> 2.6.1<br />
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I've attached a graphic example of the report to provide a better understanding of what I am trying to accomplish.<br />
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Thank you,<br />
Mike<br />
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mwilliams

Hi Mike,

It would take some work to do some scipting that would estimate how many rows the last column of the lower table ran into so that you could insert manual page breaks in the table to make it fit the page. If you were able to do it, this would also allow you to know how much space is left til the bottom of the last page so that you could force the footer to the bottom of the page.