Navigation:  »No topics above this level« BASICS

 

The basic manipulation consists to create a ASCII file. This file is transmitted to the vpxPrint DLL.

The easiest program would be something like :

OUTPUT TO "Customer.txt" PAGED PAGE-SIZE 60.

FOR EACH customer NO-LOCK :

         DISP cust-num name city WITH STREAM-IO.

             END.                  

 

OUTPUT TO TERMINAL.

 

FILE-INFO:FILE-NAME = "Customer.txt".

 

RUN printFile( FILE-INFO:FULL-PATHNAME ).

(the 16 bits users should see the special calling convention later in this document)

 

With the printFile procedure is defined as an entry point in the DLL :

 

PROCEDURE printFile EXTERNAL "xPrint.dll" :

   DEF INPUT PARAMETER A AS CHAR.

   END.

 

You have written your first vpxPrint program !

The report will be printed with graphical rows and columns without writing anything else.

It is a graphical report !

 

This conversion is done automatically by vpxPrint who interprets the title lines of the PROGRESS report.

 

You can drive vpxPrint with tags embedded in your output. vpxPrint tags are defined in a HTML-like manner. For example :

                 <B>   is used for bold characters

                 </B>  = stop bold characters

 

vpxPrint works with a full page at a time.

You can put objects anywhere in the page before the page skip.

You do not have to take care of field position to create objects. You can go through the page in any ordr.

The only rule that applies is that the fields are Z-ordered in their creation sequence and fields can overlap an existing one in the background.