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1994-03-21
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P O W E R P A C K E D P R I N T O U T S
Overview
Power Packed Printouts is a shareware library of functions
that enables you to code reports packed with features your
users will love.
Let the user specify Screen, Print, or File for output. If he
chooses Screen, he can browse the file, panning side to side
for reports wider than the display. He'll use the PageUp and
PageDown keys to move up and down through the report, no matter
how many pages. He'll see on-screen exactly the same report
he'll get when he prints it.
Other Screen options lets the him press Alt-S to search for
any string of text, and Alt-P lets him print what he sees to
any printer port or text file.
You specify page and column headers, lines per page, printer
set-up strings, etc. via a call to an accessor function. The
accessor function returns the current value and installs a new
value, if you pass it in, just the way Clipper's SET() functions
work. You will never have to keep count of line or page numbers
again. Your margins will always be exactly correct. You'll
never have to remember to reset the printer. You'll never have
to link in a third-party C file viewer or RUN an external
viewer program. It's all 100% Clipper 5.2 code.
Look at PPP.ch to see all the values you can set. Look at
PPPdemo.prg for a sample program that prints a report consisting
of the files in the current directory.
You can access the four global functions to get started in just
minutes. And since the first is an accessor function to set
static variables that control everything else, there's no long
set of parameters to pass.
pppSet( < PPP_CONSTANT >, [ <new value> ] )
This function is a get/set function. The first parameter is a
manifest constant from PPP.ch. The function returns the value
currently stored in the static variable at that location. You
can optionally pass a second parameter that sets a new value
into the the static variable.
pppInit( [ DESTINATION ] )
This function lets the user select a report destination: Screen,
Printer, File, or Exit without creating the report. You can
optionally pass in a single character parameter, 'S' for screen
or 'P' for printer.
pppLine( < xItem >, [ cMode ] )
This function lets you pass a variable to the library for it to
create the next line of the report. The xItem parameter can take
any of several forms. If it is a character data type the function
uses it as-is. If it is a numeric data type the function str()'s
it and prints. If it's a date type the function dtoc()'s it. If
it's a logical, the function prints Y for true or N for false. If
it's a B data type, the function eval()'s it.
If xItem is an array, each element of the array is evaluated and
a report line is concatenated from the individual elements. Each
element can be any of the types above. The program inserts space
between each item based on the value returned from the static
pppSet( PPP_COLUMNSPACE ).
As an additional power feature, an element of xItem can also be
an array of five elements that let you fully define the format of
any individual column:
xItem[ i, PPP_ITEMDATA ] := C, N, D, L, or B data type.
xItem[ i, PPP_ITEMLEFTSTR ] := ' | ', for example.
xItem[ i, PPP_ITEMRIGHTSTR ] := ' | ', for example.
xItem[ i, PPP_ITEMWIDTH ] := 12, for example.
xItem[ i, PPP_ITEMPICTURE ] := '999,999,999', for example.
This library is shareware. You may use it for thirty days to
see if it is appropriate for you. If after thirty days you
decide to continue using it, you must register it. With your
registration you will receive the full source code, so you can
add to it, modify it, or customize it to fit your own needs.
Once you get the source code, you may prefer to include the
single PPP.OBJ file in your link script, rather than link in
PPP.LIB.
If you have any questions, please post them to me on CompuServe
at 73060,1302 or leave a message at (214) 867-5094 or fax your
question to (214) 985-9419.
-- Steve Woolstenhulme
Log of changes:
March 21, 1994: Added PPP_DESPOOL directive to let you specify
immediate despooling, rather than gathering
the entire file FIRST to disk. Default .f.,
since that can be a problem on a network.