Very Computer

Please, can anyone offer some advice. I am running Informix 4gl 7.x
on a SCO Openserver box. My problem is that every report job that
I send from Informix has a blank page appended at the bottom of the
report. This is obviously environmentally unfriendly and nauseating for
my users. I am not using the "eject page" or "skip to top of page"
commands anywhere. If I print using "lp" from unix, no blank page is
added. This has led me to believe that perhaps I can instruct Informix
not to add this blank page.

I would be grateful for any advice in relation to the above.

Cheers, Sean.

Looks like you're reporting to printer rather than to pipe.

try something like

start report your_rep to pipe "lp -dyour_printer -o necessary_options".

For more info RTFM 4gl reference vol 1, ch 5 (report writing) and vol 2, (start report)

HTH
marco.
____________________________________________________________________________
rem radioterapia, which I immeritately manage, seldom agrees with what I say

marco greco   (Catania, Italy)      Work:

Please, can anyone offer some advice. I am running Informix 4gl 7.x
on a SCO Openserver box. My problem is that every report job that
I send from Informix has a blank page appended at the bottom of the
report. This is obviously environmentally unfriendly and nauseating for
my users. I am not using the "eject page" or "skip to top of page"
commands anywhere. If I print using "lp" from unix, no blank page is
added. This has led me to believe that perhaps I can instruct Informix
not to add this blank page.

I would be grateful for any advice in relation to the above.

Cheers, Sean.

-----------------End of Original Message-----------------

Quote:

> Please, can anyone offer some advice. I am running Informix 4gl 7.x
> on a SCO Openserver box. My problem is that every report job that
> I send from Informix has a blank page appended at the bottom of the
> report. This is obviously environmentally unfriendly and nauseating for
> my users. I am not using the "eject page" or "skip to top of page"
> commands anywhere. If I print using "lp" from unix, no blank page is
> added. This has led me to believe that perhaps I can instruct Informix
> not to add this blank page.

> I would be grateful for any advice in relation to the above.

> Cheers, Sean.

In this case it leaves 5 blank lines and trims all else.  We use it when
out-putting to the screen to trim excess white space.

awk '{ if (NF == 0 ) blank_lines++
   else {
       if (blank_lines > 5) blank_lines=5
       while (blank_lines) {
          printf "\n"
          blank_lines--
          }
       print
       }

Quote:}'

Quote:

>Please, can anyone offer some advice. I am running Informix 4gl 7.x
>on a SCO Openserver box. My problem is that every report job that
>I send from Informix has a blank page appended at the bottom of the
>report.

One possible cause of your problem is that your print spooler may be
doing that after the Informix report has dones the same thing.  You can
verify that by having a Unix job print exactly a full page of output and
see if the spooler "wastes" a trailing page like with the Informix job.

I did a quick-and-dirty check with a couple of Ace reports I had laying
around.  Both use the detault page length.  One has a PAGE TRAILER
section and exactly fills the final output page.  The other has no such
section and does not fill the final page.

You might investigate this area, then look at your spooler to see if
there are any options to disable the final slew-top-page.  If you have
an active multi-user environment, you'll have to coordinate this with
all of your other jobs, which may be pretty complicated.

Good luck,

Walt.

--

Emory University               UUCP: {...,gatech,rutgers,uunet}!emory!rmy!walt

Atlanta, GA  30329  USA       Voice: +1 404 727 0648