Re: HTML and PDF Reports

[Nathan Andelin <nandelin@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Dave Odom wrote:
> RPG has it's place in the old programming languages home.
> Move away from the albatross that makes the platform so
> "out there" when compared to other platforms.

I'm just starting to test RPG to generate HTML and PDF stream files, but 
I'll share a prototype with you.  I agree that RPG is geared toward 
programmers and production applications, but I think that if you give 
power users a set of HTML templates and RPG report templates which they 
can modify and some training, this type of reporting is within their 
reach.  I speak from experience.  I was a power user who learned how to 
write reports early in my career.

If you view the source for the HTML template you can see how it's 
divided into multiple record formats (REPORT_TOP, PAGE_HEAD, TYPE_HEAD, 
CODE_DETL, and REPORT_END), comparable to a multi-band structure that 
one might design with Crystal Reports:

http://www.radile.com/rdweb/apps/reports/xcd500/xcd500.html

If you do a print preview on the report you can see the page breaks:

http://www.radile.com/rdweb/apps/reports/xcd500/report.html

And the RPG code could be copied and adapted to other data files:

http://www.radile.com/rdweb/apps/reports/xcd500/xcd500.txt

Nathan.