Report - too much blank space at bottom of page 1

[jefftoaster]

Hello,

I'm running VFP 6.0

I've got a report that has 21 lines of detail in it. Each line has a "Print When" expression, and "Remove Line if Blank" is checked. I've double and triple checked these to make sure they're all correct. They are fine - and NOT the problem. I can say this because I've got a horizontal line before and after the detail section, and the detail section is printing correctly.

The problem is this: VFP is putting a LOT of blank space at the bottom of each page. As much as 1/3 of the page.

Looking at the next page, at least 1 or 2, if not more, of the detail areas would have easily fit on the previous page.

I've tried adjusting the group (there's only 1) "Start group on new page when...." setting, and even removing the group and it made no difference.

The only thing that made a difference was actually removing detail lines. As there were fewer and fewer detail lines, the "reserved" space at the bottom of the page grew less and less.

Can anyone tell me why VFP would be reserving so much blank space at the bottom of the page, and if there's a way to get around this?

Thanks very much,
Jeff Owens

 

[rgbean]

Jeff,
Part of the "problem" may be the printer / printer driver / printer configuration you are using. Since VFP is limited by the actual settings Windows provides, you may need to change the margin settings or try a different printer that doesn't have limitations on the area available to print on.

Rick

 

[jefftoaster]

Sorry, I should have mentioned that I already tried changing printer drivers, and switching between different printers in the "Page Setup..." for the report, including a dot matrix printer, ink jet printer, and laser printer I have. No difference.

I've also tried changing between "Printable page" and "Whole page" in the Page Setup.

The only margin I can find is the "left margin" setting in the Page Setup. Are there other VFP Report margin settings?

 

[jefftoaster]

Oops - forgot to mention - I also tried setting _PLENGTH. An old throwback from DOS Foxpro days.

 

[rgbean]

Jeff,
OK, I misread part of your question. You have 21 lines in your "Detail" Band - right? Because VFP doesn't look ahead in the data to evaluate things like what will print "when blank", it has to reserve the total size of the next detail band - all 21 lines! If there isn't this much room on the page left, you'll overflow to the next page.

If you normally have a group of blank lines that don't have complicated formating, you could preprocess this and put it into a single Memo field and print that from a single line "with Stretch". Then all you have to worry about is "orphaned" sections. (There's never a good way to handle "large" detail bands.)

Rick

 

[jefftoaster]

Crud. I suspected as much. Drat.

Ok, thanks! I'm gonna try the memo idea, thats a very good idea!

-jeff