RE: external *PRTF

[Buck Calabro <buck.calabro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Bruce Vining wrote:

>Perhaps not important to everyone, but external 
>printer files allow your program output to be 
>personalized for the end user without having 
>the "personalizer" have to get into your 
>application source code and recompile with 
>all the right options.
-snip-
>Having someone "play" with the DDS is generally 
>safer than playing with the RPG source (though 
>rules must still exist and be followed).

Bruce,
I completely concur.  The whole point of programming is to abstract the
problem into smaller, easily digested bits.  One method of improving that
abstraction is to make "format and print" separate code from "get the data."
In this way, you can easily change either part without greatly disturbing
the other.

The issue here isn't reusability - we rarely reuse display record formats
but always use DDS for them.  

Buck Calabro
Aptis; Albany, NY
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