Blank lines on forms

[rholland]

I'm fairly new to Progress. I'm in the process of changing the orientation of several forms (using Jetforms) from portrait to landscape. The problem I'm having is eliminating blank lines that print between different frames within the body of the form. I have been able to remove some with the 'skip (0)' when the blank line is within one frame. However, when the blank line occurs between two sections (within the body of the form) using different frames, or between a section using a frame and one not using a frame (if that makes sense), the skip (0) makes no difference. I'm told by a Jetforms guru that this is possible to do this in the Progress code itself, but have not been able to determine how to do it. Any help is greatly appreciated!

 

[Mike Carroll]

Using the 4GL you can create reports using either formatted, unformatted output or a mixture of both. 'Formatted' output is where you are using field formats and frames, and 'unformatted' output is where you would use 'PUT UNFORMATTED' statements.

If you are using frames, then you need to be aware of exactly what the frame is composed of. When the frame is displayed to screen, it usually has a rectangular border by default. This consumes space so when you output the same frame to a file, although the box is not drawn, the space is still used (e.g. you'll get a blank line and the top and bottom where the box would be).

Another consideration is the frame content. If the frame ends with SKIP(2) then 2 blank lines will always be output when 'displaying' the frame to a file or printer. So check whether your frame begins or ends with SKIP's or uses specific ROW positions for the first/last fields.

You may want to disable as many space-taking attributes as you can. Generally, Progress developers have a 'stock' frame phrase that they always use when producing reports. Something like:

FORM
...
WITH NO-BOX NO-TITLE USE-TEXT STREAM-IO WIDTH 132 etc.

But if you find that you still have trouble then try using the UP statement. If the frame is appearing say 2 lines below where you would like it to be, then try 'UP 2' just before you display it.