Folks

I made an interesting discovery last night, one that has disproven an assumption I've always held about FMP printing... it's on a Strawberry iMac 333 tray load, FMP Unlimited 6.0v3, MacOS 8.6, LaserWriter 16/600 PS printer, A4 paper, landscape.

Background: I'm making a sailing race result program. The results are printed out on a layout where each record is a competitor (boat and skipper info) with a field to display aggregate score, then a field each for the scores for the individual races. Since over time the number of races increases, I have created a set of layouts: with one race; with two races; etc. up to 26 races.

After 10 races the results hit the edge of the page. Last night I added another ten races to the layout by extending them horizontally to the right of the page boundary, assuming that --- like most other programs -- FMP will print out the results that don't fit onto the first page on a second page.

Imagine my surprise when the second page did not appear in preview mode, nor when printed. It seems that FMP ignors anything over the right hand page boundary!

Question: Is this common FMP behaviour and how do I get that second page of results to print? (A separate layout for the second page is no good as that will require a double print-dialog operation, which I don't think is good interface.)

As far as I know, it's always been this way. My solution is to make a second layout with the right half of the report and run two prints, one from each layout. Then, manually collate them.

Urrgh, I was afraid of that... this is the only time I've really been disappointed with FMP!

Thanks Bob.

You could rotate your fields 90 degrees, set up a multi-column layout with many many skinny columns, have it break columns after each record, and then print the whole thing out sideways

I'm just kidding, I think.

how about creating a html output that explorer will output with the 'Print Wide Pages' option turned on.

What I wonder if I read your story, is why you must add the races to the lay-outs. Ain't it possible to write the database in such a way that the lay-out catches the record-based added races, and then force a page break after every ten or so records?

(Just wondering a bit, if it were a good thing in some cases to be able to force a page break on the lay-out itself with some 'code' but don't pay attention to that thought..)

Harryk