At 01:41 PM 4/16/2002 -0400, Dan Champion wrote: > I have reported the BUG to RDCC. Though I must say I am sorely >disappointed. The same reports that I had to upgrade to 6.5++ >(which turns out didn't help a bit) can not be done with R:Base in >its unfinished state.
Dan, Yes, the "keep breakpoints" checkbox never accomplished much for me either. But like a lot of features, it's still there because if it were taken out, somebody's old reports would stop working. In my opinion, this is not really a bug, but a request for a new feature. One of the limitations of a "band oriented" report generator -- like the one in R:Base -- is that it processes one row, then prints it, then goes on to the next row. The feature you want -- to know if the next "group" will fit on the same page -- requires a look "ahead" in the data. Many people have come up with strategies to do this over the years. Unfortunately, they are all a little complicated and time consuming. Some involve a GROUP BY view that summaries the amount of data in each group, and lookups in the report that check that view to determine how much space will be needed, as well as other expressions -- reset at the page break -- that keep track of how much of the page has already gone by. It took me a couple of days of programming to do a model like that for David M. Blocker's advanced reports book a few years ago, and I didn't respond to your question right away because I didn't really have time to go into all the details and document it all for you. If you email me a fax number privately, I'll fax you the three pages from a 1995 edition of David M. Blocker's Advanced Forms and Reports book that show a model for doing this in R:Base for DOS. (Presuming David gives me permission :-) ) But Dan, lighten up on RBTI, especially publicly. You are thousands of times more likely to have RBTI attend to your personal requests for new features than you are with Microsoft. It's happened to many of us many many times over. (Maybe part of it is how you ask!) I certainly don't begrudge Razzak his efforts to get everybody up to date. I want RBTI to stay in business, because I like their products, and the more upgrade bucks they get, the more they can afford to keep these products improving. And did you ever notice, that after his suggestion that you upgrade, he usually has a work-around for the older versions, too? Bill Bill ================================================ TO SEE MESSAGE POSTING GUIDELINES: Send a plain text email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] In the message body, put just two words: INTRO rbase-l ================================================ TO UNSUBSCRIBE: send a plain text email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] In the message body, put just two words: UNSUBSCRIBE rbase-l ================================================ TO SEARCH ARCHIVES: http://www.mail-archive.com/rbase-l%40sonetmail.com/
