HP 3000 Manuals

HP ALLBASE/BRW Tutorial

Exercise 7:Defining the Linesets 

You define the linesets for the report in this section.  Linesets are
defined on the Define Lines screen.  Each type of lineset has a slightly
different Define Lines screen.  This exercise takes 60 minutes 

You have already determined what linesets you require when you sketched
the report.  Refer to the sketch again to remind yourself.  Your report
has five linesets.  The linesets are described in "The Linesets for This
Report".

You can define the linesets in any order.  But for this tutorial, please
follow the order set out.

This exercise also introduces BRW standard items and shows you how to
alter the length of an item by altering the item's edit mask.  It also
shows you how to add, copy, insert, modify, and delete lines; and how to
do column calculations by using the ColCalc field with TOTAL.

The Page Heading Lineset 

Define the lines for the page heading 

   1.  Press  Define Lines.  BRW prompts you for the lineset level, as
       shown here:


            

   2.  Type P (for Page) in the (D,P,R,1..9) field, and H (for Heading)
       in the (H,F) field.

   3.  Press Enter.  BRW displays the Define Lines screen for the Page
       Heading.


            

The Define Lines screen is similar for each lineset, so it is worth
pausing for a moment to become familiar with it.

The banner line shows the name of your report and the type of lineset
that you are defining.  The top half of the screen is a window showing
how the lineset will look when printed.  The lower half shows all the
items that are printed in the lineset.  The middle of the screen--just
below the ruler line--has two fields.  The first, smaller field is for
the line number on which you are working, and the second field is for
adding literal characters to that line.  This larger field is called the
line text field.


NOTE  Items and Literals 

      Items are either final access table items or BRW standard items.
      The value of an item when printed depends upon its value in the
      current row of the final access table, which in turn depends on the
      value of the source table record.  Literals are letters or symbols
      that cannot vary.  For example, the words "Customer Number is:" is
      a literal, and CUSTOMER-NO is an item.


Add the page heading 

From your sketch, you can see that you want the page heading lineset to
print the page number, "Customer Details Report:  1", and the date.  The
first line is underlined, and is followed by a blank line.

   1.  Start with the cursor in the first field at the left side in the
       middle of the screen.  This field shows the line number where the
       characters in the text field will appear.

   2.  Type 1 in the first field.

   3.  Press Tab.

   4.  In the line text field, type Page:  at character position 5.

       (Use the ruler on the screen to find the character position.)

   5.  Type Customer Details Report: 1 at character position 24.

   6.  Type Date:  at character position 60.

   7.  Press Enter to add the line.

       BRW adds the line to the display.

       The Define Lines screen should look like this:


            


NOTE  Adding lines 

      When you use Enter, BRW places the text on the line specified.  If
      there were text already in the line, that text would be
      overwritten.

      You could use  Insert Line instead.    Insert Line places the text
      on a new line above the line specified in the line number field.
      The lines are renumbered to accommodate the new line.

      The best way to understand how this works is to experiment with  
      Insert Line.  Feel free to experiment here.  Just be sure when you
      are finished that the screen looks like the sample above.

      Don't type a line number and press Enter as a way to call up
      another line.  Doing that can inadvertently overwrite text you want
      to keep.  Use  Prev Line and  Next Line instead.

MPE/iX 5.0 Documentation