Can we manipulate 'Chars per inch" in code?

[PavanKumarU]

Hi,
Got an additional question to my earlier one.
Can we specify this 'characters per inch' in code?
I am trying to export this report to a text file through VB also. Can i specify a setting in code to reflect no. of characters per inch?
any help is much appreciated.
Thanks,
Pavan

 

[synapsevampire]

If you're using Windows fonts, it doesn't work that way as they are proportional fonts (chars have different widths).

As for an export to text, the old rule of thumb was 10 chars per inch, but again, if you open it in a Word Doc, you may get wrap around.

Why would you be concerned with chars per inch in a text file?

-k

 

[PavanKumarU]

hi,
Thanks for the message. We are concerned abt it coz, we need to export each field with some fixed length. Lets say we export name, address, country and zip. Name shld be 30 chars. If the data we get is only 15, then the other 15 sld be spaces. And most importantly, this shld how it shld look in any editor....in notepad, in ultraedit, in MSword etc.
Unfortunately in Crystal we cant specify how many 'characters' it should display for a field.
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Pavan

 

[synapsevampire]

Fixed length has nothing to do with chars per inch, chars per inch is a printing reference to the number of chars that are shown for every inch, I had thought that this might be the case.

What you want to do is pad each field when required, or truncate the field if it's too long.

So each field becomes a formula of type text (meaning you'll likely use the totext() function on non string type fields), here's an example for a length 15 padded with spaces in front:

If Length({YourField}) < 15 then
{YourField} + Space(14 - length({YourField}))
else
left({YourField},15)

-k

 

[PavanKumarU]

Hi,
Thanks for the message. But actually, when it writes to the text file, I need those spaces. But, I am not getting them when i use your method. Any more ideas?
Thanks,
Pavan