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Iron
I have a report designed for a continuous roll printer using a 4 inch wide paper roll. The report is 6 inches "wide", but is printed LANDSCAPE, so the axis are flipped, meaning the printed "width" ends up as 4 inches (good) and the printed "height" is 6 inches on the continuous axis. So far so good, Telerik renders the report and it prints, HOWEVER; I want a page footer section that prints some information at the "bottom" of the label. When in continuous roll mode Telerik is not honoring the page footer and instead prints this immediately after the detail like a group footer, however; there is no reason why it should not honor this because the report is LANDSCAPE so even on continuous roll paper the footer can be measured against the fixed 4in "width" of the label. I have attached an image showing what Telerik is doing and what the expected output is.
This appears to me to be a bug in Telerik reporting.
The expected behavior is that the page footer would work normally if the report is landscape because in this case the fixed label width is actually the "height" (4in) of the report and the variable/continuous axis is the "width" (6in).
Any suggestions?
- Albert Boettger
4 Answers, 1 is accepted
Hello Albert,
If I understood correctly, you would like a minimal detail section height, which may be an empty space preceding the Page Footer.
Did you try to set the design-time height of the detail section to the required minimal height? It will be respected with any page settings.
The detail section may grow to accommodate its content. If the PageSettings specify a page height and the detail section and the other non-page sections in the report can not fill the entire page, there will remain empty space between the detail and page footer sections. When Printing on continuous (roll) paper the page height is ignored, hence the detail section and the page footer are rendered without empty space in-between.
Regards,
Todor
Progress Telerik
Rank 1
Iron
Hi Todor,
I think you missed the point - what I am saying is that the page height should only be ignored when printing on continuous roll paper when the label is in PORTRAIT orientation. When the orientation is set to LANDSCAPE, the page height should be honored because now this axis is the fixed width of the roll which absolutely has a known and constant value.
Because Telerik does NOT honor the page height in landscape mode it is difficult to produce labels where you want some of the output along the bottom of the label, which becomes the left edge of the label after landscape rotation. For the moment I have successfully worked around this by injecting a calculated number of blank rows after my actual content which effectively pushes the footer down to the edge of the label where it is supposed to be. This is done outside of Telerik in my application data layer. Also, in my specific use case all of my content for a given label will always fit on one label, so I don't have to worry about content for a single group "wrapping" to a second page.
I cannot see any reason why Telerik Reporting could not or should not honor the page height for continuous roll labels when the label is rotated in landscape mode. That is my point - essentially I am asking: Why is Telerik behaving this way? Do you agree that this is incorrect behavior? and: Can this be changed in a future release?
In any case, at this point I have worked around this in my data layer outside of Telerik, so at this point please consider my comments above as a suggestion for a future enhancement to Telerik Reporting.
Best regards,
- Albert
Hi Albert,
Thank you for the additional explanations. Its good to know you have found a workaround.
Please, note that the Page sections are printed per page and are located independently of the rest of the report content.
The Page Header appears at the top of the page, with the specified height occupying the entire page width. The Page Footer is rendered at the bottom of the page, occupying the corresponding height and the whole page width.
When you select ContinuousPaper, the page height is ignored. Note that the Page sections remain at the top and the bottom of the single page. Only the Page width gets changed. The Report Width remains the same, and since there is no Page Height, the Page Footer prints directly after the Detail, Groups, and Report Footer sections. That's why I suggest fixing the Detail Width to the required value.
The space that appears when the detail section is smaller than the available page area is a side effect. After rendering the Page Header as explained above, the Reporting engine renders the Report sections (not Page sections) in the available page area left after removing margins and page sections. After rendering it, the Reporting engine renders the Page Footer at the bottom of the page as explained above. If there is not enough space on the current page, the Report content will be wrapped on the next page, with a new Page Header and Page Footer. If the Report content cannot fill the entire available page area, there will remain space as observed. This space depends on the page height and the space needed by the report, and in the case when there is no page height as in ContinuousPaper mode, it will always be 0 (zero).
My personal opinion is that the current behavior is normal. If you think this is erroneous, feel free to log a bug report in our public feedback portal.
Rank 1
Iron
Hi Todor,
I do not feel that the current behavior is normal or ideal for continuous roll paper when printing in landscape. It is only normal for continuous roll paper in portrait. In the case of landscape, the HEIGHT of the report becomes FIXED and the WIDTH is variable because the report is rotated 90 degrees and is printed sideways across the label roll. So the page footer could and should honor the designated report height and be printed in its normal position at the bottom of the rotated label.
When you stated "...and in the case when there is no page height as in ContinousPaper mode, it will always be 0 (zero)" - this is INCORRECT / INACCURATE. When the label is in landscape there absolutely is a known and fixed page height, but there is no page width. In my specific case I am printing on a 4" wide continuous roll. So in portrait mode the report width is fixed at 4" and the height is variable. In landscape mode the report HEIGHT is fixed at 4" and the width is variable. Also, in landscape mode, when a page break occurs the label roll needs to be advanced by the WIDTH of the report, NOT the height. All of my labels will fit on one page, so this is not a factor for my specific use case, but in general this is something you will need to consider.
Best regards,
- Albert
Hello Albert,
In Telerik Reporting there isn't a specific rendering for ContinuousPaper Printing. As with all other renderings, in this case, all items grow only vertically, excluding SubReports and Crosstab which may grow horizontally due to column groups, etc.
When the Page is in Landscape mode, we don't rotate the report. We rather switch the Page Height and the Page Width. For example, the A4 Portrait page size is 210mm x 297mm. In Landscape mode, it becomes 297mm x 210mm. That said, in A4 Landscape mode, the Reporting engine has a more available area to render the report content compared with A4 Portrait.
The Landscape mode in ContinuousPaper doesn't make the Height of the page fixed, nor does the Width unlimited. The Page Height is considered unlimited, and the horizontal content will be based on the report width, which may result in incomplete report pages if the actual page is shorter.
You may still log a feature request to be analysed also by the Telerik Reporting product management.
Rank 1
Iron
Hi Todor,
My observations of printing labels on a Zebra ZT410-300dpi with cutter using a continuous roll of 4" wide paper do NOT match what you stated. On this device, when configuring a 6" wide x 4" high report and selecting landscape, the label is printed rotated 90 degrees sideways across the 4" wide roll, making the Telerik report height correspond to the WIDTH of the continuous roll. Not sure if the Zebra driver is playing any games with the report or not. Perhaps that is an explanation for why what I observe is different from what you stated.
In any case, the workaround that I am using of injecting a dynamically calculated number of blank data rows to push the page footer section down to where it is supposed to be is producing the desired results. Thanks for your help and please close this issue.
Best regards,
- Albert