Using Rich Text Formatting Tags in Catapult
Catapult is BCD's automated report distribution tool. With Catapult you create 'grab' rules that identify reports to be distributed, the format in which to distribute them, and the means by which they will be sent out. For example, a typical grab rule scans specified outqueues for matching reports, and on finding them downloads the spool file, converts it to PDF, adds hyperlinked bookmarks and password protection, and distributes the report as an email attachment to a saved distribution list.
One of Catapult's strengths is the number of options you have available to enhance the format of the original iSeries spool file. Among the tools available are Catapult Rich Format Tags. This solution is recommended for situations where you need to introduce font changes, bar codes, bolding or underlining in your iSeries report. In order to use Rich Format Tags you do need to be able to change the source of your iSeries report.
We have recently expanded the Catapult User Guide section that describes this feature, the available tags and their exact syntax, and have also added several more examples. Following is a summary of the steps required to implement this feature in your reports.
1. Identify the Need.
Before you get started, you need to clearly identify the formatting need in your report. The following scenarios are a good fit for Rich Text Format tags:
- Adding bolding or underlining to a report, where these features are not already implemented via overprinting (Catapult can handle overprinting automatically).
- Converting an alpha-numeric value to a bar code that will be displayed in a document destined to be printed.
- Displaying a particular heading, field or line in a different font, and/or overriding the character spacing or leading to correct alignment issues.
While you can also use Rich Text Format tags to override the font of your entire report, there are easier ways to do this in your grab rule. Rich Format Tags are best suited for overriding the look of small sections of text.
2. Create a grab rule to download the report.
Start by creating a grab rule to download an unformatted version of your report. When you create your grab rule, email the report to yourself as a PDF, and at the Download tab make sure you select the *RICH download format (rather than the more commonly used *FILE or *RPT options).
3. Edit the DDS source member for your report.
Find and open the your report source file. Before making any changes in the source member, press F13 to confirm that the option ‘Uppercase input only’ is set to ‘N’. The RTF formatting tags include lower case characters, and are case sensitive.
Then locate the string that you want to adjust. In the example below, we are going to change the font of our report title, Inventory Item Listing. In the DDS shown here, this heading is in line 7:
*************** Beginning of data **********************************
01.00 . A* External Printer File DDS
02.00 . A*
03.00 . A*PRTF Merge printer file DDS specs
04.00 . * Heading Format
05.00 . A R QH0101
06.00 . A SPACEB(2) SKIPB(1)
07.00 . A 29'Inventory Item Listing'
08.00 . A 69'Page'
09.00 . A* System date value for current job *PGMFLD
10.00 . A @@MMDDYY 6S 0O 1
11.00 . A EDTCDE(Y)
12.00 . A* Report Page Counter *PGMFLD
13.00 . A PAGE 4S 0O 74
In the generated report, the text heading begins in position 29. However, notice in line 10 of the source listing above that this report line also has a 6-position system date field beginning in column 1, with an edit code of Y. The reason this is relevant is that when we insert the RTF tags into our reports, as far as the iSeries is concerned, the tags are actual report text, occupying space on our report, and a typical font override can occupy up to 20 spaces on the report.
4. Add the RTF tags around the text string.
For this example, we are going to change the program title to Arial 12 point. To do this, we need to insert a line above line 7:
5.00 . A R QH0101
6.00 . A SPACEB(2) SKIPB(1)
'''' A 10'{''Fs"Arial" "12"''}'
7.00 . A 29'Inventory Item Listing'
The Catapult user guide lists all the available tags and their requirements. In this example, the base tag is this: {'Fs"Arial" "12"'}. We are placing this text on column 10 of our report, following the date field.
Then you also need to add a tag to end the font change (in a similar fashion to HTML). Our program title starts at column 29, and is 22 characters long, so by placing the tag in column 55 we can avoid overlaps:
5.00 . A R QH0101
6.00 . A SPACEB(2) SKIPB(1)
6.01 A 7'{''Fs"Arial" "12"''}'
7.00 . A 29'Inventory Item Listing'
7.01 A 55'{''Fe''}'
Here we have added line 7.01 with a Rich Text Format End Font tag, {'Fe'}.
5. Save and Compile your changes, and Re-run the Report.
After making these changes, you need to save the source member and recompile your DDS (or the report itself, if you are using O specs). Then rerun your report, and wait for your Catapult grab rule to process it. This time, your PDF should reflect the formatting changes you made to the report title.
As a final step, you may need to do some tweaking to the report layout to compensate for the fact that Catapult's report generator processes the Rich Text Format tags, and consequently drops the space they occupy from the report. This consequence is handled more effectively by generated PDF files than by RTFs.
For further information on this topic and additional examples including bar codes, underlining and bolding, please download the latest version of the Catapult User Guide. Or if you need a hand getting this feature working in your report, call Technical Support.
EZ-Pickin's V8 is Now Available
If you own an old version of EZ-Pickin's (Versions 4 to 6), you can now upgrade directly to the latest version immediately and get all the features offered in all versions affordably.
EZ-Pickin's V8 Pro
The most powerful version of EZ-Pickin's currently available is Version 8 Pro. In addition to the features available in the Version 8 Standard Edition, EZ-Pickin's V8 Pro includes support for importing data from PDF reports, and also exporting data extracted from EZ-Pickin's to PDF. When you work with Adobe PDF files, you can also save any required passwords in EZ-Pickin's.
The EZ-Pickin's feature comparison chart.
Version 8 Pro also offers faster, more flexible importing of data from databases as well as any ODBC-compliant data source such as DB2/400, SQL Server and Oracle, spreadsheets, CSV files and more. This further reduces the need for custom database queries and report writing. You can also change the data type of fields imported from these data sources.
For more information about EZ-Pickin's V8, please visit www.bcdsoftware.com. At our website we also have a useful EZ-Pickin's Version Comparison Table, where a table showing a list of features and the version at which they were first available can help you determine whether you should upgrade.
For further information about upgrading your licenses, please call BCD at
(630) 986-0800, or send us an email.
To learn move about EZ-Pickin's, and how you can use EZ-Pickin's with BCD's Catapult
and Spool-Explorer to automatically extract data from iSeries reports, please visit our website.
Switching Graph & Chart Styles in Clover
Clover has three different templates that you can use to generate more than a dozen different styles of graph and chart, including multi-series views of your data. Each template supports multiple graph styles, and sometimes it can be hard to decide which style will most effectively highlight the patterns in your data. The most suitable style can often depend on the type of data you are illustrating, or even the particular ratios evident in a particular report or a single iteration of a report.
Fortunately, the Clover templates make it easy for you to switch your report to generate a different graph style.
Here is a portion of the PML code in a program generated from the Clover Multi-Series Flash Graph template:
// grType = "SC_2_3_MSArea2D.swf";
// grType = "SC_2_3_MSBar2D.swf";
// grType = "SC_2_3_MSColumn2D.swf";
// grType = "SC_2_3_MSColumn3D.swf";
// grType = "SC_2_3_MSLine.swf";
// grType = "SC_2_3_StckdArea.swf";
grType = "SC_2_3_StckdBar2D.swf";
// grType = "SC_2_3_StckdColumn2D.swf";
// grType = "SC_2_3_StckdColumn3D.swf";
This list corresponds to the internal names for the 9 graph styles supported by the template. The currently selected graph style is he third from the bottom.
To try a different graph style, all you have to do is comment out the line that's currently enabled, and remove the slashes from in front of one of the other styles. Then regenerate your program, and review the results!
For example, the Multi-Series Flash Graph template defaults to creating an Area graph. In this example, we are attempting to illustrate a summary of our customer orders, by customer, for each of the last three years:
To make an impact, this style relies on consistent proportions between the three graph variables. For example, if over the last three years, the orders for each and every one of our customers had grown significantly, this graph would show that information effectively. But as you can tell, for this data the design isn't all that effective.
By commenting out the first line (in the code above) and uncommenting the third line, we can quickly regenerate the graph using 3D columns:
In this case, this graph style looks like a better choice. As you can see, it can be useful to quickly switch between a few different styles to check which will most effectively communicate the message the data is trying to convey.
Additional Recommended Reading: Edward R. Tufte's Visual Display of Quantitative Information and Visual Explanations. |
BCD
Earns System iNEWS Award for 25 Years of Consecutive Monthly Advertising
Wayne Madden of System iNEWS recently presented BCD's Eric Figura with a unique
award for being their longest running consecutive advertizer. Imagine running
one or more ads every month for over 300 consecutive issues!
System iNEWS has been BCD's # 1 vehicle for keeping you informed on our advancements
in technology and solutions.
We would like to thank our 10,000+ world-wide clients who have placed their
trust and confidence in BCD, and our award winning modernization solutions. Your
support fuels our creativity in developing innovative software for you and the
best server in the world, the System i. We are committed to your success and
promise to keep providing you the very best solutions and support - Now and into
the future.
Enter for a chance to win $25K in Free Software!
BCD is celebrating this special occasion with a drawing you can enter to win
one of over 60 prizes, including a grand prize of $25,000 in free software, Starbucks
Giftcards and cool BCD T-Shirts! To enter the drawing, visit
our website and fill out the entry form. Good luck!
Sign
up for the WebSmart PHP Beta
The first group of beta testers have been working with WebSmart PHP for a
few weeks now, but if you are interested in using PHP to design business application
on the iSeries (and beyond!), there is still plenty of time to participate.
For further information, read the
article in the June tech update, or visit
our website to request further information, as well as instructions for downloading
the install files and documentation.
WebSmart
6.5 Beta Available
In conjunction with WebSmart PHP, we are also preparing to release WebSmart ILE
6.5, and you can also beta
test that release now. WebSmart 6.5 includes the following features (as well
as many other smaller items):
- Support for working with multiple definitions and other documents in the
main IDE window.
- A new visual HTML editor.
- An FTP interface for accessing other web development files (JavaScript,
CSS, etc.)
- Support for editing JavaScript files in the IDE (including color coding,
formatting and function lists/positioning)
- Support for Unicode data type.
- Improvements to all templates.
- Improvements to the Most Recently Used file list.
- Faster generation time.
- Improved 'undo' functionality.
If you have any questions about WebSmart 6.5, please contact
Technical Support.
If at any time in the last few years you've run into a particularly sticky
Catapult problem, you've almost certainly enjoyed some long conversations with
Marc Alonzo. Marc has been working with BCD at our Sidney, BC office for a little
over 3 years, and in that time has evolved into the resident support team Catapult/Spool-Explorer/Nexus
expert.
Having grown up in Israel, where he attended an international school, Marc
has brought a broader perspective on things to our group. After getting his degree
in Computer Science, Marc joined ESDI primarily because we're near the water
(Victoria is one of the few places in Canada where there's year-round surfing
within a reasonable driving distance), and has stayed on with us because of the
people he gets to work with.
Since settling down here in Victoria, he has continued to travel extensively
in search of the perfect wave. Surfing through hurricanes in Florida has taught
him to stick things out, because, as he puts it, "it usually gets pretty heavy
before it gets really, really good".
New
WebSmart Example Program
We have published another WebSmart
example program this month:
Example
133 - Displaying Multiple Map Markers. This example explains
how to create multiple markers with tabbed info boxes in a Google map. This program
generates a two-tabbed info box for each icon, and you can then click on the
links within these tabs for further information. Here is an illustration of this
program:
This program is similar to Example 132.
If you have any questions about any of the examples posted, please drop a
note to Technical
Support.
Current
BCD Software Release Levels
These are the current release levels for all our products:
If you have any questions about how to get to the latest versions, please contact
Technical Support.
Summary
List of Recent Updates
ProGen Plus 9.02
There are three recent updates for ProGen 9.02:
- PG90004 -
2007/05/22 - Resolves issue when trying to change library reference for a file
using ZCHGDBF for a specific definition and the validation would not allow the
user to rename the file.
- PG90005 -
2007/05/22 - Resolves an issue where Style F programs would crash when the user
hit ENTER from the main screen (Report Panel Design Aid) if there were more than
50 detail formats.
- PG90006 -
2007/07/05 - This update will replace the shell files for Styles A and N for
both the ILE and RPG400 platforms. If you have customized shells please back
them up so you can copy your changes to the new shells. Resolves cursor position
error when calling a program that loads an empty sub-file list .
For additional information please visit the ProGen
Plus Updates page.
Catapult 6.16
Catapult 6.16 is now available
for download from our website. Version 6.16 includes the following features
and fixes:
- When a new rule is created, the Console will load the correct OS dependant
decimal symbol instead of always loading a decimal point.
- The option for specifying the maximum number of lines per page when overriding
the Page setup has been enabled for use with RTF documents. This option will
add extra page breaks based on the number of lines placed on each page
- When Catapult submits a document to Nexus and gets returned a message stating
No Distribution rules match it will now flag that document as a warning and not
an error.
- Catapult will now send out a warning email to the administrator if no distribution
rule matches a given Nexus document.
- Resolved faxing issue when using a fax number from inside a distribution
group.
- Resolved issues with using a group to assign return addresses to split segments.
- Resolved issue where less than requested number of copies for an RTF document
were printed.
- Resolved an issue encrypting compressed files.
Please visit the Catapult
updates page for further information.
DbGen 2.31
There has been one recent DbGen update:
- DB23R014 (Requires
V5R1M0) - 2007/07/10 - Retain the subfile position when scrolling through
multiple pages of logical views.
Please visit the DbGen
Updates page for further information on the available updates.
Organizations
that Recently Purchased BCD Software
Alaska Railroad Corporation • Ameriwood Industries • BJ
Services Company • CDIM • Cereal Food Processors, Inc. • Clark
Construction Group • Coty, Inc. Computer Operations • Cox & Company • Fort
Dodge Animal Health • GE Inspection Technologies • GNLD International • Ingersol
Rand • Isanti County • Isle of Capri Casino • Isoclima • J & R
Schugel Trucking Inc • Junior Gallery Ltd • Medclaim Partners • Med-Equip • Miller
Electric Mfg. Co. • Navajo Express • Nestle Ivory Coast • Oman
Arab Bank • Pennsylvania College of Technology • Peter Stevens Motorcycles • Plaid
Enterprises • Plano Women's Healthcare • Portneuf Medical Center • Redwood
Capital Partners • RSR Corporation • Saitt • Sanistaal A/S • Scott
Specialty Gases • SKF USA, Inc. • Synergy Medical • Technology
Consultants • United Credit Service • Vimec • Waynesboro Area
School District |
