The Report Composer design window displays a report form similar in behavior and appearance to the screen form that appears in the Screen Designer. You add elements to this form to design your report.
By default, a grid of dots is displayed over each report form. This grid can be used to help you align elements of the report,
creating precise columns and rows of printed output. The default size of each grid cell is 10 pixels by 10 pixels.
You can change the default grid behavior, as well as other report measuring behaviors, in the Tools > Options interface. To do this:
- Open the Tools > Options interface, expand the Report Writer tree, and click General.
- If desired, use the Grid width and Grid height entry fields to change the size of each grid cell. The measuring unit is pixels.
- To force new report elements to align with grid cell boundaries, check the Snap to grid check box. In a graphical report, you can still adjust the position of the control one pixel at a time using the arrow keys.
- To simplify the process of aligning report elements in relation to one another, check the Auto alignment check box. When this function is turned on,
- if you position a report control underneath another control, and
- the horizontal position of the two controls is within 5 pixels of one another, then
- the new control's left boundary automatically aligns with the existing control's left boundary.
- To control measuring behavior in the generated code, use the radio buttons in the Unit group: to measure sizes and distances
in inches, select the Inch radio button; to measure in centimeters, select Centimeter.
- In HTML reports, you have the option to choose whether embedded spaces in control titles or values are collapsed or preserved.
To automatically collapse spaces, check the Collapse Spaces check box. To preserve embedded spaces, uncheck the box.
Note: Entry fields have a special Display Type property, used, among other things, to control spacing behavior. If the Collapse Spaces option is checked in the Tools > Options interface, the Display Type property is used. If the check box is not checked, values in the entry field are treated as though the Keep Spaces option were selected, regardless of the actual value set for the Display Type property.
- If you have used the XFD tab of the File Designer to apply a NAME directive to any fields in your data files, you can choose to have the contents of the NAME directive appear
in the Drag and Drop interface, rather than the actual field name. To enable this behavior, check the Apply XFD Names to Drag & Drop check box.
For more information about creating XFDs and the XFD NAME directive, see Designing a Custom XFD.