Positioning objects near Part boundaries

[Mandu]

Is there anywhere a set of rules about how to position objects near the bottom and top edges of a Part, so as to make things mesh properly when printed?

In particular, I'm trying to do the Lineitem portion of an invoice. The column header is in the Header, each lineitem is in a Body part, and the View mode is to be List. I'm having a hard time figuring out things like:

How to get the column header box to sit directly atop invoice line 1 (instead of hovering one pixel above it)

How to size and position vertical line segments in the Body to create a long, unbroken vertical line when printed (or to not disappear entirely!)

How to get horizontal lines between line items without screwing things up.

I could go on describing the oddities that result from an object being one pixel too high or low (mainly in "iterated" parts like Body) but I think people know what I'm talking about.

I'd much rather get a pointer to a document that I know must be out there somewhere, than answers to the specific examples I've just given.

Thanks,

Chap

[Søren Dyhr]

I could go on describing the oddities that result from an object being one pixel too high or low (mainly in "iterated" parts like Body) but I think people know what I'm talking about.

Not that I understand the intire list of grievance felt, but I would say that no grapical element could serve more than one master. Either is it header part only or bodypart only.

What you can do is fill the entire header area with say a solid colour by clicking the part label once and then turn to leftmargin colouring tools and pick one, this is far better than pasting object in to make them get as close to the divider as posible, if you get too far is it just cut off abruptly.

--sd

[Mandu]

The problem isn't with background colors, but with graphical objects. Take, for instance, the line item portion of an invoice: it needs a title, column headers, rows, and cells. I will use a Leading Subsummary part to contain the static, upper portion (Billing and SHipping data, and the column titles for the line items to follow), and a narrow Body part to contain a single row of the line item table. I will display the invoice in List View, which will iterate the Body part for each line item.

If I assume that graphic objects must be entirely within their owning "part", I can't seem to get a smooth, unbroken lineitems table.

Here's what works, as I found through considerable trial and error:

The Leading Subsummary, according to Object Size pallet, goes down to pixel 277. The Body starts at 277, goes down to pixel 290, and is 13 pixels tall.

The column header, a rectangle with several text objects laid out horizontally, is by-and-large on the Leading Subsummary part. But I have to position it so that its bottom edge goes down to pixel 279 in order to avoid having a narrow gap between the header and row 1.

The Body part, 13 pixels tall and starting at vertical pixel 277, is a rectangle with a one-pixel-wide border, also 13 pixels tall and starting at vertical pixel 277. Additionally, there are 13-pixel tall line segments (one-pixel-wide) dividing the row into its individual cells. These, too, start at vertical pixel 277.

Intriguingly, although both the line segments and the rectangle are 13 pixels tall and begin at 277, the Object Size pallet reports that the rectangle's bottom is at 290, whereas the line segment's bottom is at 289. Weird geometry, baby.

What I've described above actually seems to give the results I wanted: the header sits atop the body of the line item list; the various vertical line segments concatenate to produce the appearance of a single unbroken line, the horizontal line segments lie directly atop one another rather than on adjacent pixel rows to produce fat lines. It's all seamless.

But if you alter anything by even a single pixel, odd things happen: usually the object in question will disappear entirely. One must make the header extend two pixels below the bottom of its enclosing part to make it flush with what follows, but an object in the body that extends one pixel above the top disappears entirely!

The bottom line (as it were) is that I need to know how to draw "by the numbers" to achieve the effects I'm after, and they are anything but obvious to me, at least when it comes to table-like graphics.

As I said earlier, I take it for granted that FM 8.0v3 is working according to spec in this regard -- I just need to know what those specs are, and I have been unable to find them by searching these forums, the Filemaker site, or the Internet at large.

[hbrendel]

... One must make the header extend two pixels below the bottom of its enclosing part to make it flush with what follows ...

Seems to me that you found the answer yourself.