[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Truncating fields in reports

[Mike Rylander]

On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 8:28 PM, John Morris <jmorris at beau.org> wrote:
> On Thu, 2011-10-27 at 09:03 -0400, Whalen, Liam wrote:
>> >
>> > I currently truncate long fields like title or author on
>> > reports so that it can fit in a nice tabular format.  Can't
>> > find a way to do that with the generator.
>>
>> The tabular form of output that Evergreen uses for its reports is an HTML table, so, as long as you don't have extremely long words, the table will break up long fields into multiple lines.
>
> I'm old school.  If I could find a way to get greenbar fanfold paper
> into a laser printer I'd be printing reports on it.  But I ran a test
> and the consensus is multiple lines is ok and everyone else liked the
> look so I'm outvoted.  Down to one remaining problem.  I have a three
> day fudge factor coded in so items wouldn't start popping out on the
> report until it is three days overdue.  Can't find a way to do the
> equivalent to "AND due_date < (NOW() + '3 days')"
>
> Also interesting that you can't get landscape printouts.  The option is
> greyed out when printing anything in the staff client.
>
> And just an observation... Am I the first to notice != is missing from
> the list of operators?  IS NOT NULL is there, IS NOT NULL or Blank, Not
> between and Not in list are all there but no basic Not Equal.
>

There's not, but you can do it.  You can use "Not In List", which is
"x NOT IN (...)", and for a one element list is equivalent to "x <>
y".  To be honest, I'm tempted to remove the "Equals" operator and
document the use of "In List", but for the templates out there that
use "Equals" today.

-- 
Mike Rylander
 | Director of Research and Development
 | Equinox Software, Inc. / Your Library's Guide to Open Source
 | phone:  1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
 | email:  miker at esilibrary.com
 | web:  http://www.esilibrary.com