When trying to print a record using the "Record Commands - Print Form" option,  the printer just spits out a blank sheet. I have tried this on on some 10 different db forms with the same results, no print.
This also occured using records from the "Samples\gems. db"
When I tried it on the "Samples\Schedule.db" it did print a rectangle 1 1/8" x 5/8" in the background color in the top left corner of the page.
Table Views print.

The help screen & manual are a little vage with the following statement
"Forms are scaled to fit the printed page. If you have a form with very large dimensions, but only have layout elements in the top left corner, then the printed page will show the "active" area of your form in miniature at the top left of the printed page"

Can you clairify the correction for this statement & how do I get the saved record to print using this method? Am I missing the obvious?
thanks, becky

Alec, I.m using Windoze XP pro printing to a HP2500c+
I did go into Q&A 5.0 after posting last night to print some needed records and it printed fine but then again Q&A uses a older dos driver.

You should certainly use the correct printer driver for your printer. I suggest you remove all the extra "printers" you have installed (alternative drivers) and download the latest drivers for your printer from the HP website.
This printer seems to have a reputation for being horribly slow if you don't buy the RAM upgrade. You may not have seen this from Q&A, because it is only
printing text. Sesame is printing a "picture" of the form, which will take much longer to process.
How is printing from other Windows apps?  Have you tried printing other than small text documents from Word?

You might like to explore creating another form optimised just for printing. You can have as many forms as you like, and you can copy a form in Designer / Layout Manager.

You might also like to check out the WordMerge app supplied with Sesame. This allows you to print a single record using Word.

As for your suggestion for additional control over how elements print  - this is a good one, and we are certainly considering it for future versions.

Concerning the delay in printing: does the delay occur before or after the standard print dialog appears?

If it happens before, then Sesame is trying to assemble your form for printing. Typically this happens no slower than it takes to assemble the form to show on screen - it is the same code with its output redirected to the printer. Typically, this is nearly instantaneous. In Win32, all "drawing" is done to a "device context" (called a "DC"). Usually that would be the device context for your screen. In print form, we use the device context for your printer, instead of the screen. The device context is part of the operating system that attaches a program to the device driver for any device that can draw. From the program's point of view, the DC for one device is identical in speed to any other DC. Any variation would be between the DC and device driver used.

Once the print dialog appears, Sesame is suspended by the operating system - which is busy passing (and possibly translating) the contents of the print queue to the print driver. Any delay here would be universal to any print job of equal complexity. To find a job of equal complexity - find a web page with a layout, use of color, use of images, background image, and somewhat equal size as your form, and print it from your web browser. Make sure (if your form has a background color) to tell the web browser to print the background color and background images from the web page. Both Netscape and I.E. have options to tell them to print the background.

There are at least three HPs that go by the term 2500c - one of the them is a plotter - intended for use in displaying technical drawings. Because it is built for extreme accuracy - this 2500c will be very very slow. From your description of its general behavior, I doubt this is the one you have. Another 2500c is a color laser printer. The third is an ink jet printer. In that you describe using 11"x17" a capability of only the inkjet and the plotter - can we assume you have the inkjet?

Do not use the Postscript translation module with Sesame for any form that has color fills - Postscript is an ASCII format that will create a text description of every dot of color it is trying to print. This will be very slow. If your print driver allows control - you may be able to specify that it use B&W or greyscale - and see if that improves the speed.

Have you tried making a copy of your application (always work with at least one backup) and setting the form colors so that the backgrounds are all white and the text is all a single color? If that improves the print speed - you may consider using two forms both attached to the same data. One for data entry and other operations. And one for printing. A macro or SBasic programming could allow you to switch between them in automation.

For your final application you may consider using the print commands in SBasic. They will allow you to extract the data from your result set and print it pretty much however you want (with labels or without). Or you should consider using the free form reports in report writer. The print commands use a similar mechanism as print form, but offer substantially more control. The free form reports use the operatings system's HTML print handler - so if your web browser is printing quickly, so will they.

We are looking into providing a separate command that will print only the form data and labels - not the using the background colors or the "boxes" or the static images. If there is sufficient market demand, it will be in the next major release.

Mark, bear with me and  I will try to explain my problem a little better than the previous post and answer your questions at the same time.

The printer we use is a "Deskjet HP 2500C Plus"
Sesame will not print using the standard 2500c series print driver under Windows XP pro.
Driver name "UNIDRV.DLL"
Data File "HPWM5250.GPD"
Config File "UNIDRVUI.DLL"
Driver Version "5.00"

HP does not have an updated driver for this printer under WinXP.

To get Sesame to Print I installed the "PS3 & PCL5" drivers (the only other drivers available for the HP2500 series) and Bingo, Sesame printed, but with the result of slow transfer to the printer which I presume is the result of converting to postscript.
Now we do not want to print using Postscript but it was the only way we could print using the 2500 series drivers.

Per my previous post:
Quote:

I am told I should not use drivers for other printers, but if I can find one that works so we are up and running with the new data base for the start of the new year then we have time to figure out the rest later.
Besides if I tell the boss we need to spend $999 to upgrade our printer to the newer HP2600 business series printer just to print our forms, I may find myself on the unemployment list 

Our new data base that I'm working on feverously for the new year has been stripped of a lot of Sesame's bells and whistles in the form design just to get the quick print to our forms.

One of the biggest things we liked about Q&A is that using a point of sale invoice, pic ticket data base system is that while your customer is standing on the other side of the couter, anyone in the workshop can fill in the blanks on the screen form, hit F2, F10 to print, F10 to save record, put a hard copy in the customers hands in 30 seconds or less and be pulling the ordered items from stock immediately. This not only makes us happy but our customers also.
We don't have to change screens to find print specs, or design them for that matter and this sure makes life easier.

It is still early & Sesame is showing itself to be a very powerfull DBMS but sometimes its the simplest operations that makes things work well.   

Going along similar lines, from our point of view we would love to see the menu tree moved to drop down menu's along the top menu bar and give us full screen use of our form. The reason is, using the above mention data base system, we have designed the form to match paper layout then to print using "Record Commands / Print Form"
As you cannot see all your form without scrolling and if you drag the form to full screen so non computer savey employees don't get confused with the tree then we are creating more headaches and problems getting those employees back to the print form selection.
A drop down menu with a "Print Form" selection working with a full screen would simplify input immensely, would also make Sesame more familiar like 99% of the other programs we use.

Your probably sick of my ramblings by now but as I'm on a roll with this subject of printing records on the fly at input, we would like to be able to print the record prior to saving to the data base. You get so many customers after seeing their ticket want to make changes to the order. As the order is committed to the data base the non savey worker from the workshop now has to quit out of add records and now have to access to search/update records for them to find and change. We feel this one is a diaster waiting to happen for us.

Of course this is not criticism just quirks that we would like to have to make our DBMS more powerfull.

Well, for starters, F2/F10 (PrintForm) is not the same thing as a mail merge in any program, including Q&A. 

A mail merge involves placing the data from each record in a data source into the correct position in a word processing document. At an absolute  minimum, you need to:
1. Create the data source and fill it up with data records.
2. Create the merge document and tell it where the data goes.
3. Tell the document what records to use and where the data is.

It would be quite a trick to explain all of the above steps while remaining completely non-technical. Especially considering how complex merge documents can get!

There is an article on this subject which mentions three different methods that are explored more fully in the manuals, and gives an example of a fourth at:
http://www.lantica.com/Support/sesamelibart24.html

Your Sesame package includes a WordMerge application which can be used to get you started. It comes with several sample merge documents that run by clicking a button in the Sesame form. It works very nicely, and can be used an an example.

Merging is a popular topic and I'm sure that Inside Sesame, the newsletter that replaces The Quick Answer, will include many articles on the subject.
http://www.insidesesame.com

Bottom line, there are a number of ways to skin this particular cat. One of them is likely to work for you.

Quote:


Have you tried the WordMerge samples?  It does what you describe here, even easier than Q&A. You set up merge document(s) and use them for merging with your database, as in Q&A.  Only difference is that the merge document is in Word.

In fact, it's easier than Q&A.  I'm sure you will all find - after a short while - that the Sesame logic of "Find your records first, then decide what to do with them" is actually more convenient, and more intuitive, and often faster, than Q&A's "Tell me what you want to do, then tell me which records you want to use.  Want to do something else as well? - Then start all over again."

Great thanks for putting up with me...can't wait to get my hands on my copy!!