I want to print the contents of a field. It's length varies - sometimes
it's quite short, other times a couple of pages long. I need to set up a
layout that will print the field no matter how long it is. Obviously, if
the contents are short, I only want to print one page. 

I have tried making a layout using a sliding field, but it doesn't work.
It only prints one page no matter how long the contents of the field. 

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Rich 

In article <1ghfsrv.agtjp5v6l4jeN%rich.sagall@pobox.com>,
rich.sagall@pobox.com (Rich Sagall) wrote:

> I want to print the contents of a field. It's length varies - sometimes
> it's quite short, other times a couple of pages long. I need to set up a
> layout that will print the field no matter how long it is. Obviously, if
> the contents are short, I only want to print one page. 
> 
> I have tried making a layout using a sliding field, but it doesn't work.
> It only prints one page no matter how long the contents of the field. 
> 
> Any suggestions?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Rich 

Put the field on the layout and stretch it to the maximum size you
want. Make sure the field is selected and open up the Sliding options
window and turn on "Slide Up" (usually "based on all above") AND
"reduce size of the enclosing part".

PLUS, set the same sliding options for ALL the fields, boxes, lines,
text blocks, etc. that appear below the field on that layout. It should
then work properly.

Sliding only removes the unused are of the FIELD, not the gap you may
have left between two fields,
eg. this will always print with a one line gap between Field1 and 
    Field2.

       [Field1]

       [Field2]
    
so make sure you've got only the blank space you actually want printed.

Notes: 
- Sliding doesn't work in the Header or Footer part of a layout.

- Sliding objects are only viewable in Preview Mode or when printed, 
  so you won't see any difference in Browse Mode.

- Portals don't really work with Sliding, you should really be 
  printing from the related file instead.




Helpful Harry                   
Hopefully helping harassed humans happily handle handiwork hardships  ;o)

it worked - sort of. The longest article I can have is four pages long.
When composing the layout of the printed format, I made the box that
contains the article four pages long. 

When I print out an article that is less than four page long, I get
anywhere from 1 to 3 blank pages. The total number of pages that go
through the printer is always 4. 

How do I solve this annoying problem?

Thanks,

Rich

In article <1ghhy9l.b2755b1nvk7emN%rich.sagall@pobox.com>,
rich.sagall@pobox.com (Rich Sagall) wrote:

> it worked - sort of. The longest article I can have is four pages long.
> When composing the layout of the printed format, I made the box that
> contains the article four pages long. 
> 
> When I print out an article that is less than four page long, I get
> anywhere from 1 to 3 blank pages. The total number of pages that go
> through the printer is always 4. 
> 
> How do I solve this annoying problem?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Rich

First things to check:

   - make sure the field data doesn't have blank lines /  carriage 
     returns on the end of the text you actually want.

   - make sure you've set ALL elements below that field on the 
     layout to slide up - it's easy to miss one.

Perhaps try drawing a small black filled square under the field, set it
to slide up and see where that gets Previewed / printed. That should
tell you if the field itself is or isn't sliding properly.


BUT, having fields that stretch across page breaks can often cause
problems and is something you should avoid doing (many printers will
crop off some of the field data). 

I've never tried it sliding across a page break before, but I've just
done a quick test which shows me that it doesn't work. The elements do
slide up, but the Body part doesn't fully remove unused space, it stops
at the first page break going upwards.   :o\ 

If possible, the best thing to do would probably be to split that
article into four separate records and have the field only one page
long - but you'd also have to split any other long records as well.




Helpful Harry                   
Hopefully helping harassed humans happily handle handiwork hardships  ;o)

Here's how I finally got it to work. 

I figured out how many characters would nicely fit on one page. For the
field I have, it's 2600. I then created four layouts. The first is only
one page long, the second will print 2 pages, the third 3 page, and the
fourth 4 pages.

Then I set up a series of IF statements in the script for printing the
page. They determine which of the four layouts contains the proper
number of pages and uses that one to print the article.

It seems like a cumbersome solution, but it works.

Now if I could only figure out how to export the articles in some sort
of a text format and maintain the formatting of the article!

Rich