Hello all -

I have a situation where I am trying to have Filemaker spit out a
blank page when a document has an odd number of pages.

In the script, I get the recordset, I go to the layout, I go to
Preview Mode, I go to the last Page/Record, and then use
Get(PageNumber) to get the total number of page in the document.

This method gives me a page count of 31. I verified this manually by
going to the same layout in preview mode, with the same recordset, and
navigating to the last page.

However, when I go to print the page, it gives me 29 pages! I am using
the ## at the bottom of the page to show a page number, and even this
ends at 29 on the last page.

Even thought in my test case above, I still have an odd number of
pages, this is causing me problems with other recordsets that are odd
in preview mode, but print out with an even number of pages.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

On Jun 22, 11:01 am, lawp... (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote:
Try to identify where the issue is happening. Why is the preview
version 2 pages longer. Obviously somewhere along the line the preview
starts being wrong.

Does the first page in preview match the first printed page? Does the
second? Where does it stop lining up? ... figure out WHERE, and from
there we can look at WHY.

In general, the 'sliding' feature can mess up preview a bit, as things
seem to sometimes slide more or less on the printer than filemaker
thinks they will in preview mode. Dropping the sliding, if possible is
often a solution. Also, margin settings can also be an issue.

Cheers,
dave

In article <1182535262.098347.201760 (AT) m36g2000hse (DOT) googlegroups.com>,
lawpoop (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote:

I'm afraid I can't shed any real light on it, but I can confirm that
Preview mode is a little flakey - something I forgot to mention before.
I've tried it on various printers using Mac OS 9 and X, and using
FileMaker 4 and 5, and it shows the same page-shifting flaw. Where the
flaw shows itself depends on the records being used, and sometimes you
can be lucky enough not to hit it. (

I have a database system that was originally designed to print a
Directory, complete with table of contents and index. It used Preview
mode to work out the page numbers, but unfortunately when you print the
document there was sometimes a record that somehow manages to squeeze
onto the previous page even though in Preview it didn't fit. This of
course cause all later pages number to be incorrect.

In my case I didn't bother to look at it much further since they
decided they didn't like the layout directly from FileMaker and wanted
features it couldn't do, so the data is now exported to PageMaker
(InDesign next time) and laid out there instead.

I do recall doing some testing and discovered that the line-spacing was
slightly smaller on the printed output than it was on the previewed
version, so changing the font used might help ... or it might just move
the page-shift to a different record.

Dave's idea of turning off sliding might be worth looking at, although
then you'll end up with large gaps in the printout. If it is the
sliding feature that's causing the problem, then it is something that
FileMaker Inc need to seriously look at fixing.

In your case since all you want is a blank page on the end, you could
add a Trailing Grand Summary part that is a full page height - you will
get the extra page on reports with an even number of pages, but you can
just remove it from the report and use it as scrap paper.


Helpful Harry
Hopefully helping harassed humans happily handle handiwork hardships ;o)

As you've discovered, preview mode is not an exact representation of
printing. Often, the OS lets the printer use it's own corresponding
font, which doesn't always have the same metrics as the computer's
installed font.

One possible workaround is to adjust the line spacing on your layout.
The default line spacing for any text field or text block on a layout is
"1 line". This, of course, means different things to different
components. You might try setting all layout objects with a more
accurate setting by changing the line spacing to pixels. For example, a
12-point font might use line spacing of 14 or 15 pixels. This way, both
the printer and the preview are (theoretically) using the same scale in
their output, regardless of differences in font metrics.


lawpoop (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote:
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Howard Schlossberg
FM Professional Solutions, Inc. Los Angeles

FileMaker 8 Certified Developer
Member, FileMaker Business Alliance