Form Layout for Line Printers

Before you start to lay out the form, you need to decide where the position of the first line (Line 1) is going to be. This is the line on which the form is to be aligned in the printer to print correctly. Usually it is best to make Line 1 the first line where printing is to take place. This means that after printing, the form advances as far out of the printer as possible.

The form is laid out on the Document Layout dialog by selecting database and/or text fields, entering a number in the Line field, and specifying their Starting and Ending positions on the form. For a one-character field, such as Sex, the starting and ending position will be the same. You can use the ending location to truncate text to be printed.

Important: Due to a defect in the code that we elected not to correct, an additional space is inserted after each field on a line. So if you have three fields—each 5 characters—that you want to print in positions 10 - 14 ,20 - 24, and 30 - 34, the second field will appear one character too far to the right, and the third field will appear two characters too far to the right. This is easily corrected by deducting 1 from the starting position of the second field and two characters from the third-field starting position.

Bar Codes can be printed on an MT691 line printer, but no other printers are qualified at this time.

  1. Click New.

  2. In the Field Type box, select Database.

  3. In the Database Field Name pane, select the required data field you want to add. The field and its location

  4. In the Line Printer Layout box, enter the Line number, Start position and End position of the field.

  5. Click Save.

  1. Click New.

  2. In the Field Type box, select Text Field.

  3. In Text to Print, type the text you want to add.

  4. In the Line Printer Layout box, enter the Line number, Start position and End position of the field.

  5. Click Save.