BIRT Eclipse report stripping leading spaces followed by % sign

I read through this post first to see if the solution I needed was provided, but it wasn't:

http://www.birt-exchange.org/org/forum/index.php/topic/16988-displaying-a-hierarchy-in-a-crosstab/page__s__cb2eb1a560509bb6368d2725087e7177

I've run into a similar situation where my BIRT Eclipse report strips out leading spaces that are placed in the column text by the query that creates the column. What?s interesting is that the leading spaces are only dropped for specific rows ? only rows where the text begins with ? %? (two leading spaces and then the percentage sign). I have anther query where I built in the two leading spaces and then an alpha character begins the text of the description and those rows appear on my report just fine.

This is the description column of my query that's losing the leading spaces and how the data appears in the ?Preview Results? window ? the leading spaces exist at this point but aren?t making it onto the report itself.

description
Total Lives
Registered Lives
Users Active w/in Last 3 Months
% of Registered Lives
Unique Log-Ins
% of Users Active w/in Last 3 Months
% of Registered Lives
Engaged Users
% Engaged w/in 7 days of alert receipt
% of Unique Log-Ins
% of Users Active w/in Last 3 Months
% of Registered Lives

I haven?t been able to figure out a way to get around BIRT treating rows that begin with ? %? differently from ones beginning with ? [alpha character]? so I wonder if anyone has suggestions for how to retain those leading spaces.

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Comments

mwilliams

What is your BIRT version?

Meg E.

It's Eclipse 3.6.2 (build id M20110210-1200, in case that helps).

Meg E.

From email Michael Williams sent:

Did you tell me you see the spaces in the preview of the data? Just not in the report? If so, you could create a computed column in your dataSet and replace the double spaces with " &nbsp", then in your layout, delete the data element for the field and replace it with a text element, choose HTML from the drop down in the text editor, then select the value-of tag for dynamic text and select your computed field. This should show your field correctly, now. Let me know.

My computed column code using Michael's suggestion:

// Look for leading spaces and percentage sign to indicate row to indent
is_indent = BirtStr.search( " %", row["description"] );

// Is this an indented row?
if (is_indent >= 0)
// Yes
{
v_temp = " &nbsp" + row["description"];
}
else
// No, use description value as is
{
v_temp = row["description"] ;
}

mwilliams

So, everything works with this, now?

Meg E.

Yes, all is well with my report "indenting" with the leading spaces I wanted. Thanks for your assistance on this!

mwilliams

You're very welcome. Let us know whenever you have questions!