>Does anyone know of a way (possibly using Real Basic and
>Applescripts/Apple Events) to print a record from FileMaker Pro a
>certain number of times (number of times contained in a field on that
>record) without manually entering the number of copies into the number
>of copies in a print dialog box.
>We have a large number of records in a database which have to be printed
>a varying number of times and we want to spool this to a digital
>printer. It is no good just looping and printing one copy of the record
>each time through the loop since the digital printer would see these as
>separate jobs and not keep the sheets together.
The one time I was faced with this (that is, had to print multiple
copies, but couldn't loop the print x number of times, and I NEVER trust
my users enough to give them a print dialog box, and expect them to fill
it in correctly), I would up getting around it by moving my actual output
layout to a related database. Then I copied the record to be printed's ID
number into the related database, and duplicated that record x times.
Thru the use of the relation, there was no need to copy more than an ID
number, as one I had that, the rest of the data could be pulled from the
master record.
If I wanted 10 copies, I duplicated the record 10 times, then told it to
just print all records... resulting in 10 copies of the same data being
printed (FMP thinks it is 1 copy each of 10 different records, but the
end result is the same).
After printing, my script deleted all the records, and returned the user
to the master DB.
To the user, all they saw was, they choose print, FMP span for a few
moments, 10 copies spit out of the printer, and control was returned to
the user.
Of course, this doesn't really work too well if you have extremely
complex layouts (lots of data filled in by calculations based on
relations), or are trying to print 10 copies of 10 different records (its
possible to do multiple records, but I found that it just didn't work
nicely... you had to make sure you walked the records to be printed,
copying and duplicating each as needed. It was fine for 2 or 3, but after
that, the delay's became very obvious)
-chris
<http://www.mythtech.net>
|