Column shading       Put a shade under a column

 R&R has always allowed you to highlight selected data in a report by using
 attributes such as bold, italic, and underscore. R&R allows those of you
 with laser printers to highlight selected areas of your report with
 shading. The figures on the next page illustrate the two types of shading
 explained here:

 COLUMN SHADING

 Column shading enables you to highlight one or more columns of data in a
 report. The trick to producing this type of shading is to insert shading
 characters (in this case extended ASCII character 176) immediately below
 the data field(s) to be shaded. Then, using the /Line Print Height
 command, you can assign the line with the shading characters a line height
 of 0, which forces the shading characters to overprint the line above
 them.

 Follow the steps outlined below to do column shading

 1. First, we made sure that one of our printers has a font whose symbol
    set includes one or more shading characters light enough to overprint
    data without obscuring it. In this case, the HP LaserJet Il has a
    12-point, 10-pitch Courier font with the PC-8 (also called IBM-US)
    symbol set. In this symbol set, characters with decimal numbers 176,
    177, and 178 are shading characters, of which character 176 is the
    lightest. To make sure we would print the finished report on the right
    printer, we used the /Print Destination Printer command to select the
    HP LaserJet II.

 2. Next, we made sure that this font and any others we wanted to use in
    the report were available. Because we wanted to use the Helvetica font
    from the Microsoft Z font cartridge, we used the IPrint Font-File
    command to attach the RRHP Z font information file (FIF) to the report.
    This FIF gives R&R information about both the internal Courier font
    needed for the shading characters and all the fonts on the Z cartridge.
    (Note that you do not need to attach a font information file if you
    want to use only fonts internal to the printer.)

 3. After attaching the FIF, we pressed F8 to see if the ruler pitch
    matched the pitch (number of characters per inch) of the font in which
    the shading characters would print. In this case, the ruler pitch was
    automatically set to 10, to correspond to the pitch of the report's
    default font (the first font in the attached FIF). Since the Courier
    font with the shading characters is a 10-pitch font, we did not have to
    change the ruler pitch. We pressed Enter to retain the current pitch.

    Note that if the ruler pitch is smaller than the pitch of the shading
    font, your shading characters will print with gaps between them.

 4. Next, we created the report layout, typing text fields in the title
    area and inserting data fields on the first body line. We used the
    /Line Print Font command to apply 14-point Helvetica to the title line
    and lO-point Helvetica to the data fields in the body area. We also
    used /Line Print Attribute to make the title bold.

 5. Because Helvetica is a proportional font, one whose characters vary in
    width, we weren't sure how much space each data field would ccupy on
    the report. To maintain the columnar alignment of the report, we used
    the /Field Width command to assign a width of 2 inches to the NAME
    field. This width should be sufhcient to accommodate any name in the
    database, but if a name is longer, R&R will truncate it at 2 inches
    instead of pushing the data in the HIREDATE and DEPT fields to the
    right.

 6. To insert the shading characters, we moved down to the line immediately
    below the NAME data field and pressed Shift F3 to display R&R's
    extended character screen. We moved the cursor to the lightest shading
    character, pressed F3 to select it, and pressed F3 20 times to insert
    20 of these characters on the report layout. Since the Courier font in
    which these characters will print is 10 pitch (i.e. has 10 characters
    per inch), these 20 characters will occupy 2 inches in the report,
    exactly the width we assigned to the NAME data field.

 7. Because 12-point lO-pitch Courier is the default font for this report
    (Font number 1 in the attached FIF), we did not need to explicitly
    apply a font to the text field consisting of the shading characters.
    (When a field is first entered or inserted on the report layout, the
    default font is automatically applied to it.) However, to make sure, we
    highlighted the shading field and pressed F4 to check that the field
    would print in the correct font.

 8. Next, we used the /Line Print Height command to manually specify
    heights for two lines on the report layout. We assigned a line height
    of 12 points to the body line containing the data fields and a line
    height of O (in any unit of measure) to the body line containing the
    shading field. By making the line height of the data line the same as
    the point size of the font applied to the shading characters (12
    point), we forced the shading characters to overprint and completely
    fill the line above them. (If we had not changed the height of the line
    containing the data fields, the shading characters would have
    overlapped, since the first body line would have automatically taken on
    the height of the largest font on the line, Helvetica 10 point.)

 9. Finally, we used the /Print Preview command to preview the report
    before we printed it. In the un-zoomed display, the shading obscured
    the data. However, when we zoomed in closely, we could see both shading
    and data. We could also check to see that the shading characters filled
    the column completely, without gaps between lines or characters. After
    exiting preview, we print the report to an HP LaserJet II, to produce
    the output.