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Customizing the Format of Report Titles

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Abstract

A variety of statically formatted informational items are printed on the first few lines of each page as report titles. Exactly what is printed and where is controlled by several setup parameters as well as a configuration file.

Q&A:

Question:

Can I change the format of the top three or four lines of each report? If so, how can I do this?

Answer:

Beginning with V4.3, the answer is YES! Prior to V4.3 all you could control in the top 4 lines of each page was whether or not a particular item was printed. This is done with the following setup file parameters:

PRINT-PRODUCT
PRINT-DATA-FILENAME
PRINT-CMD-FILENAME
PRINT-VERSION
PRINT-DATE
PRINT-PAGE
PRINT-TIME-OF-DAY

While these setup file parameters still apply, you now have the ability to control where these data items are printed. This ability is handled by the title control file as designated by the TITLE-CTL-FILE setup file parameter. The name of this file is usually XENTIS_TITLE.DAT and it is found in the XENTIS<version>$REPORT$DATA directory.

The title control file allows the user to control the horizontal position and the vertical line of all the elements of the title lines. The horizontal position can be specified as an absolute, relative (such as centered or right justified), or adjusted relative position, such as 10 characters from the right margin. It also allows up to four literals to be specified on each report. The title control file has a number of comments that document the format of the file. Type out the file and look at it.

EXAMPLE:

The default title control file looks like the following:

PRODUCT, LINE=1, COL=1
VERSION, LINE=1, COL=8
PAGE, LINE=1, COL=R
DATE, LINE=2, COL=R
TIME, LINE=2, COL=R-22
DATAFILE1, LINE=2, COL=1
DATAFILE2, LINE=3, COL=1
DATAFILE3, LINE=4, COL=1
DATAFILE4, LINE=4, COL=R
CMDFILE, LINE=3, COL=R
TITLE1, LINE=1, COL=C
TITLE2, LINE=2, COL=C
TITLE3, LINE=3, COL=C
LITERAL1, LINE=0, COL=0, VALUE="Literal value 1"
LITERAL2, LINE=0, COL=0, VALUE="Literal value 2"
LITERAL3, LINE=0, COL=0, VALUE="Literal value 3"
LITERAL4, LINE=0, COL=0, VALUE="Literal value 4"

Please note that LITERAL1, LITERAL2, LITERAL3, and LITERAL4 all have a LINE value of zero. A LINE value of zero tells XENTIS to not print that particular item.

One common modification to this file would be to establish a LITERAL1 value equal to your company name with LINE=1 and COL=C, change TITLE1 to print on line 2, TITLE2 to print on line 3, TITLE3 to print on line 4. Then in the system setup file, change the COMPANY parameter to NONE. This allows you to have 3 title lines, in addition to the company name, centered on the first line.