Vertical Lines...again

[Greg G]

So I have searched the forum for answers and still can not find something that works.

I have a print layout that contains a header, leading sub-summery, body, trailing sub-summery and footer. There is one row of fields in the body and when printed it should look like a spread sheet. The fields are two lines tall and are set for sliding when printing. I would like to have vertical lines between the fields in the body. I have tried to draw in lines and set the left and right borders but nothing works right.

Anyone have any ideas?

[LaRetta]

If you draw your vertical lines so they actually start slightly in the header and end slightly in the footer, they will expand/contract automatically to allow for the size of the body. :wink2:

[Greg G]

I've tried this and I get some unexpected results. On some pages the vertical lines do not extend through the last row on the page on others it is fine.

See the example below.

test.pdf

[LaRetta]

Strange. I've seen some strange things but never this. Have you tried printing to a different printer to see if it's more a driver issue than your layout?

It might help to see the file.

Edited March 16, 2007 by Guest
Added suggestion

[Greg G]

yes, This is how it views in Preview mode as well as being printed to various printers.

Edited March 16, 2007 by Guest

[Greg G]

Ok, I attached a copy of the DB with only that layout so you can see it.

Thanks

Archive.zip

[LaRetta]

Take a look at the fix. As I reviewed it, I noticed that each page ended up with a different amount remaining - indicating the row height couldn't reconcile and it wasn't a line problem at all. With the size of header and footer (and considering your printer gutters), you only have a specific number of rows that can print per page (depending upon row height). Sometimes you need to tweak this to get maximum number of rows per page. It is difficult to tell what exactly I did so I'll list it here:

1) I increased the size of the row by 2 px. from 23 to 25 (I guessed on the amount of increase).

2) The vertical lines were too tall. They were set to 25 px. long. I decreased them to 22 px long. They should start at 114 px.

3) Field size should be 23 high and start at 113 px and some of your fields are of different height (and wouldn't display all of the text).

LaRetta

Update: Oh, and I moved the line at the bottom of the row down 2 px so it lined up nicely with the vertical lines.

ArchiveREV.zip

Edited March 16, 2007 by Guest
Added update

[Greg G]

LaRetta,

Thank you so much for taking the time to try and sort through this. I truly appreciate it.

I have gone over your adjustments and noticed the following. At the current line height and possition they no longer extend into the footer and therefore don't change size with the slidding fields. This forces the rows to be two lines high all the time. As soon as I extend the line into the footer the same problem crops up.

So I guess the questions is, if it's an issue with not being able to resolve the number of rows/heights etc, then is it impossible to do this when the data and sorting is going change all the time?

I wish FM would fix this long time issue and give us the ability to have sliding vertical lines.

[Greg G]

I found the following support artical on the Filemaker website that address this issue. Their method #3 of accomplishing vertical lines works but has a couple of drawbacks.

1) You can not have the lines get longer or shorter as the fields slide. The lines will remain the length of the body or page.

2) It requires a trailing subsummery part. So if you need to use one for your data it may get complex or not work at all. I suspect that the use of multiple subsummeries could work with this but have not tried it yet.

http://filemaker.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/filemaker.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=4237&p_created=1115172817&p_sid=RZ-85Iwi&p_accessibility=0&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9NDMxJnBfcHJvZHM9MCZwX2NhdHM9JnBfcHY9JnBfY3Y9JnBfc2VhcmNoX3R5cGU9YW5zd2Vycy5zZWFyY2hfbmwmcF9wYWdlPTEmcF9zZWFyY2hfdGV4dD12ZXJ0aWNhbCBsaW5lcyBzbGlkZGluZw**&p_li=&p_topview=1

If there are any other creative suggestions out there I am open to anything at this point.

Greg

[Mandu]

I'm having trouble with vertical lines even with fixed-height rows. I hope no one minds if I piggy-back onto this topic...

I looked at LaRetta's solution and copied out what I think are the important measurements. The "Size" viewer has an up-arrow, a down-arrow, and a height-double-arrow, which I refer to as N, S, and H. So here's what I see in LaRetta'a solution:

UpperSubsummary: 112S

Body: 112N, 137S, 25H

Footer: 137N

UpperHorizLine: 113N/S, 0H, 1pt stroke

Field: 113N, 136S, 23H, no stroke, no borders

LowerHorizLine: 137N/S, 0H, hairline stroke

VerticalLine: 114N, 136S, 22H, 1pt stroke

I notice, though, that the vertical lines appear broken rather than continuous. Changing LowerHorizLine's stroke to 1pt did not fix this. I assume the magic lies in VerticalLine's height and position. How would one tweak the above settings to fix that?

Thanks,

Chap

[mr_vodka]

Try changing the body to 24 pix height

[Mandu]

Ok, that seems right.

It appears that it's necessary to set the bottom horizontal line's stroke to "hairline", is that correct?

[Mandu]

Here's what I've managed to get so far....

Creating a decent-looking table with fixed-height rows using List view:

Assume:

Bn = pixel position of northern edge of Body, according to Size viewer.

Bs = pixel position of southern edge of Body, according to Size viewer.

Bh = pixel height of Body, according to Size viewer.

Place upper horizontal line at Bn+1. I've only tested with stroke=1pt. Despite appearing to be a part of the Body, it is only rendered once, forming the top of the table.

Place row-separating horizontal line at Bs+1. This line MUST be stroke=hairline. Despite appearing to be in the Footer, it is actually rendered as the bottom edge of each row.

Place bottom horizontal line at Bs+2. You'll probably want this line's stroke to match that of the upper horizontal line; i.e. stroke=1pt.

Your data fields should be Bh-1 in height. You probably want to omit borders. The top edge of each data field should be at Bn+1.

Your vertical lines should be Bh-1 in height, and their northernmost position should be Bn+1. These can be of any stroke size, but if you want your inner horizontal and vertical lines to have the same stroke, you're constrained to hairline, since the horizontal line MUST be hairline.

The actual rules may not be quite as strict as this, but since experience has shown that one pixel can make the difference between being off by one, and vanishing altogether, I'll just stick with this for now.

:pounce:

[mr_vodka]

Well you should set it to match whatever the rest of the grid lines would be. In this case hairline, but it is more asthetic than anything. But make sure that it is in the right layout part. It will probably look more different on your mac than my PC.

[Mandu]

I can't get the horizontals to appear unless I set them to hairline. At 1pt they disappear in preview mode. Of course, that's on a Mac, and on FMP 8.0.